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NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 
SHERWOOD EDDY 


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NEW CHALLENGES 
TO FAITH 


WHAT SHALL I BELIEVE IN THE LIGHT OF 
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE NEW SCIENCE 







<u OF P RINGE >> 
4 NO ¥ 9 1926. 

~ 
en OgioaL sew 






BY 


SHERWOOD” EDDY 


xew G9) vor 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
By_GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 
WaT ee 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

OTE WOE ot ioe eae eee tials LUN Ua nN ou aS Tie vii 
CHAPTER 

PE PLEIN E,W GLEE NGG aie ee ur ena hai 13 

The Triumphs of Modern Science............ 13 

Science/and ‘Religions oun kos sida ey oe Bole 2 25 

BLVOMItON yee Wiech e sce Deal LHe nar Mean a2 

FROLALIVILY cee cick Dal Sicitalet iota sia se es ot eemnca gee 40 

Li LAEONEW | PSYCHOLOGY ooo s See 51 

Behaviorisin Geese te eee eee ne 51 

Pav choanalysisyo sec iki Vales eh eke eee te 78 

Mine KoCStall OCHO ess scares select ates 90 

III. ANEW DISCOVERY OF GOD............... 98 

PRIN ACUEE ic ache ee Ce ta ih saute Pe 114 

BPIVEATE erates Sart oo awh are Be 118 

BE POXDCTIEN CE el wins eines eae to ater ald 127 

hie tae NEW VIEW. OF. THE BIBLES oo. oe. 132 

Vanier tio CLRISTIANITY 2.00 20 ee ues 166 

Its Sources in the Old Testament.............. 167 

Meta’ OF CHrISty (2. sted Tummy SINS bi 170 

ine Contribution. Of bal veces coc uie coe aia 182 

The Oriental Mystery Religions.............. 189 

VI. THE NEW REFORMATION................ 194 

eneNeed 17 The INAHOM Moe eae anion el ecute 196 

mh mecd: tn the Coirch eee an etal o 205 

The Character of the Reformation............ 220 


i Ni KY, 
nM; oan 





FOREWORD 


After thitty years of work the writer had the privilege of 
a sabbatical year. He felt the need of catching up with the 
new science, especially in the possible implications of 
relativity. He wanted time to study and evaluate the new 
psychology, especially in the applications of behaviorism and 
the Freudian schools. He needed time for reading in the 
new currents of thought in philosophy and theology. Accord- 
ingly the academic year 1925-26 was spent in Columbia, 
Teachers College and Union Theological Seminary in the 
center of some of the new movements of thought. Toward 
the close of the year the suggestion came of sharing some of 
the results with many who had not the privilege of such a 
sabbatical year, nor the good fortune of studying in such a 
center, nor access to the books in the libraries of New York. 

The field covered in this short volume is obviously too 
wide for thorough and exhaustive work in any one depart- 
ment. The book lays no claim to originality. It is rather an 
attempt to gather and share thoughts from a hundred other 
volumes, each of which treats some special subject more 
adequately than can be attempted here. The author’s views 
are personal and unofficial and do not represent those of any 
other individual or organization. 

The author’s thanks are due to many friends for reading 
portions of the manuscript. He hesitates to mention some of 
them lest it should seem to make them responsible for any 
of the errors or shortcomings of the book. His grateful 
thanks are due to Dr. Otis Caldwell and Dr. Edwin E. 
Slosson, the joint authors of “Science Remaking the World,” 
for their suggestions on the chapter on the New Science; to 
Dr. Gardner Murphy, Dr. E. C. Lindeman and Dr. Goodwin 
Watson for their valuable criticisms on the New Psychology, 
and also to Professor Harrison Elliott for help in the final 

Vil 


vill FOREWORD 


revision of this chapter; to Professor J. H. Howson for 
suggestions on the chapter on the Discovery of God; to 
Professor Frame on the New View of the Bible; to his 
colleague, Mr. Patrick Malin, for help in revising the entire 
manuscript, and to Miss B. W. Parker for correcting the 
proofs. 

As in the King James and Revised Versions pronouns 
referring to God or Christ are not printed in capitals. A 
bibliography for further reading on each of the chapters is 
included at the end. Some of these books are available in 
the free loan library of the Fellowship for a Christian Social 
Order, Room 505, 347 Madison Avenue, New York. 


New York, 1926, 


The author acknowledges permission to quote from 
Behaviorism by J. B. Watson, published 1924, by W. W. 
Norion & Company, Inc. 


fest | 
A ee 





NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 





Cuapter I 
THE NEW SCIENCE 
THE TRIUMPHS OF MODERN SCIENCE 


Modern science constitutes a new challenge to faith. Let 
tis consider this challenge in the light of the brilliant achieve- 
ments of the new science, its history, its relation to religion, 
and the specific problems presented by evolution, relativity 
and the new conception of matter. If the nineteenth century 
was “the wonderful century” of invention, the twentieth bids 
fair to be the super-century of discovery. Alfred Russell 
Wallace contrasts the great inventions of the nineteenth 
century with all preceding ages. He maintains that there 
were twenty-four epoch-making new discoveries between 
1800 and 1900 and only sixteen of equal importance in all 
preceding history. In the following table the practical inven- 
tions are noted first, and the theoretical discoveries follow. 


EPOCH-MAKING DISCOVERIES 


Preceding Ages Nineteenth Century 
Practical Inventions Practical Inventions 
1. The Use of Fire 1. Railways 
2. The Mariner’s Compass 2. Steamships 
3. The Steam Engine 3. Telegraph 
4. The Telescope 4. Telephone 
5. Barometer and Ther- 5. Lucifer Matches 
mometer 6. Gas Illumination 
6. Printing 7. Electric Light 
8. Photography 
9. Phonograph 


10. Rontgen Rays 
11. Spectrum-analysis 
12. Anesthetics 

13. Antiseptics 


1 Alfred R. Wallace, “The Wonderful Century,” p. 154. 
13 


14 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Theoretical Discoveries Theoretical Discoveries 
7. Arabic Numerals 14. Conservation of Energy 
8. Alphabetical Writing 15. Molecular Theory of 
9. Modern Chemistry Gases 
10. Electric Science 16.' Velocity jot" bagny 
11. Gravitation Earth’s Rotation 
12. Kepler’s Laws 17. Uses of Dust 
13. Differential Calculus 18. Chemistry 


14. Circulation of the Blood 19. Meteoric Theory 
15. Finite Velocity of Light 20. The Glacial Epoch 
16. Geometry 21. Antiquity of Man 

22. Organic Evolution 

23. Cell Theory; Embryol- 

osy | 
24. Germ Theory of Disease 
Almost every year of the new century has witnessed some 

major discovery or invention. The following is only a partial 
list. 


Recent Dtscoveries 


1901 Planck’s quantum theory of energy. 

1901-03 DeVries theory of mutation. 

1902 Rutherford proved emanations of radium. 

1903 Orville Wright flew first heavier-than-air 

machine. 

1904 Electron tube first used in radio. 

1905 Einstein’s special theory of relativity. 

1905 Establishment of vitamines as conditioners of 
health. 

1907 First commercial wireless across Atlantic. 

1908 First experimental evidence of atomic theory. 

1908 Minkowski’s conception of a four-dimensional 
world, linking together space and time. 

1909 North Pole discovered by Peary. 

1909 Millikan measured charge of electron. 

1912 South Pole discovered by Amundsen. 


*From “Science Remaking the World,” Caldwell & Slosson, intro« 
ductory table. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 15 


1910 Madame Curie isolated metallic radium. 
1915 Einstein’s general theory of relativity. 
1920 Measurement of Betelgeuse proved existence of 


giant stars. 
1919-1922 Confirmation of prediction of Einstein’s theory 
that light bends in passing the sun. 


1924 Confirmation of Einstein’s prediction that lines 
in the spectrum of the sun are shifted to the red. 
1925 Millikan investigates cosmic rays from space. 


When the writer went to India in 1896 he had never seen 
an automobile, but on his recent return from Europe he flew 
from Berlin to London, breakfasting in Berlin, taking lunch 
in Hamburg, tea in Amsterdam and dinner in London. At 
the moment of writing two flights have been made in one 
week to the North Pole. By wireless we speak around the 
world in a few relays and a missionary in Africa can now 
hear the evening concert in London by radio. Great Britain 
now communicates with Uganda and her other African 
colonies in one-quarter of a second. Science has condensed 
our world into a neighborhood, the various parts accessible 
one to the other by travel in less than one-tenth the time of 
a generation ago, and by the communication of thought in an 
instant. And yet while it has shrunk our world it has 
expanded our universe a thousand times. 

In the field of biology the scientist has named over twenty- 
five thousand backboned animals and over two hundred and 
fifty thousand backboneless animals. Following Mendel, 
DeVries and others in “creative evolution,” the scientist is 
producing new species of animals and plants every year and 
transforming our agriculture. He counts the body’s four 
billion white blood corpuscles and twenty-five trillion red 
blood corpuscles, each of which is a complex world in itself. 
He weighs the half ounce of gray matter in the higher cortex 
of our brain where we do our thinking and takes a census of 
its 9,200,000,000 separate nerve cells numbering over five 
times the population of our earth. “And each cell is a com- 
plex, intricate, living unit often like a busy telephonic ex- 


16 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


change, receiving calls and bringing one part of the body into 
communication with another. How glibly we talk of a ‘single 
cell’; but a cell is a little world in itself.”2 Of all these 
multiplied millions of cells in the human body not one is 
neglected. By a wonderful system they are kept supplied 
with food, water and air in proportion to their need, with no 
neglected slum areas. The secret service of the chemical 
messengers or “hormones” keeps the whole body regulated 
and coordinated. Even the humblest of creatures is a world 
of wonder in itself. As Walt Whitman said, 
“A mouse is miracle enough to stagger 
Sextillions of infidels.” 


Everywhere in this complicated and highly organized uni- 
verse there is, as Lotze said, “the unity of an onward- 
advancing melody.” 

In astronomy we are laying our hands upon the stars. 
With the naked eye we can see only four thousand stars, 
with a large telescope several hundred thousand, with a 
photographic plate in the greatest telescopes, several hundred 
millions. Some of the stars have been measured, weighed 
and analysed. No sooner did Laplace say that we should 
never know the composition of the heavenly bodies than 
“science invented the spectroscope, by which the exact com- ) 
position of the sun is better known than the interior of our 
own earth. We first discovered helium in the sun, then 
found it on the earth and filled our balloons with it. Our 
delicate instruments can measure the heat of a candle at a 
distance of fifty-three miles, or of a star at countless millions 
of miles. Man can now see 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles 
away, or a million light years, to the “new” universe recently 
identified by the Harvard Observatory. You can find it in 
the star catalogue number N. G. C. 6822.2 Yet the light of 

*J. Arthur Thomson, “Science & Religion,” p. 121. 

*E. E. Slosson, “Keeping Up With Science,” p. 15. Other facts in 
this chapter will be found in “Science Remaking the World,” “Crea- 
tive Chemistry,’ “Chats on Science,” and “Sermons of a Chemist,” 
by E. E. Slosson. J. Arthur Thomson’s “Outline of Science,” “Science 
and Religion,” and “The System of Animate Nature’; “Science, 


Religion and Reality,” by Lord Balfour and others; A. N. White- 
head’s “Science in the Modern World.” 


THE NEW SCIENCE Le 


this “new” universe that reaches us tonight left it a million — 
years ago. At the moment of writing the Harvard Obser- 
vatory announces another new star, ten million times brighter 
than our sun, ten million light years away. It is a brand-new 
star, the result of a terrific explosion which occurred ten 
million years ago, though the light has only just reached us 
traveling at the rate of seven times round the earth in a 
second.” 

Science has turned from its conquest of the stars to that 
of the inner world within the atom. As Bacon said, we have 
discovered “the secret motions of things.’ It takes a billion 
billion molecules of hydrogen to make a tiny speck of one 
one-hundred-and-fiftieth of a pound, yet the scientist can 
weigh, measure, count and analyse not only the molecules but 
even the atoms as accurately as the giant stars. Dr. Robert 
Millikan of the California Institute of Technology studies 
the atom by the spectroscope, and then brings us his photo- 
graphs revealing the astronomy of the atom, as the 
astronomer does of an eclipse.” 

He finds each atom composed of electrons, or negative 
particles of electricity, whirling about the protons, or positive 
particles of electricity, with almost the speed of light. Just 
as the location of the planet Neptune was calculated and 
predicted by Professor Adams before it had been seen, so 
Dr. Millikan on Bohr’s theory calculates the radius of each 
orbit of these electrons in the ratio of the squares of the 
numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. He then locates and verifies by 
photographs the orbits of the electrons.* Just as the astrono- 
mer predicts the moment of an eclipse and the return of a 
comet after many years, as Halley’s comet returned on time 
in 1910, so the physicist sets up his spectroscope, photographs 
and verifies the motions of the inner world of the atom. 


1N. Y. Times, May 20, 1926. Star catalogue N. G. C. 4303. 

2“The Stripped Atom,” Scribner’s, May, 1926, p. 477. Prof. 
Harkins of the University of Chicago has photographed the evidence 
of the building up of a heavier atom from lighter ones, showing proof 
of the uniting of two atoms to make a third. 

®Dr. Millikan calculates the wave length of radiation that an 
electron should emit as it changes its position to an orbit nearer the 
nucleus, and then verifies his prediction by means of the spectroscope. 


18 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Some of these electrons when shot out of an atom move at 
nine-tenths the speed of light which travels 186,000 miles, 
or more than seven times round the earth, in a second. Yet 
this is not too fast to elude the scientist. He makes the most 
accurate observations of these divisions of atoms, which 
themselves are ten thousand times smaller than the tiniest 
particles discernable under the microscope. 

The electron is the smallest thing known in the world yet 
the scientist can measure its diameter as one five-thousand- 
billionth of an inch. It would require 5,000,000,000,000 
electrons side by side to measure one inch. Each one 
“weighs” about one eleven-octillionth of an ounce. Pro- 
fessor Tournier D’Albe calculates the number of electrons 
in the human body as 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 
000,000. But this is a mere fraction compared to the num- 
ber of electrons which, according to Professor Millikan, pour 
through a common sixteen-candle-power electric light every 
second. He says that counting at the rate of two electrons 
a second, it would take the whole population of Chicago 
20,000 years to count the number that pass through) the 
ordinary electric light in a single second. We are in a living 
universe not one particle of which is still. 

The scientist counts the electrons, “strips” them off, or 
adds them to the atoms of the principal elements and brings 
us the photographs of this wonderful subatomic world, which 
exists in every particle of matter and of our own bodies. 

In the sphere of health modern science has conquered 
smallpox, reduced typhoid, destroyed yellow fever over wide 
areas, and is advancing in the conquest of tuberculosis and 
other diseases. It has discovered the friendly germs which 
destroy the bacteria causing some of our diseases, and we are 
perhaps on the way to conquer all disease on our planet. 

A century ago a poor peasant boy, Pasteur, was born in 
France. In the University of Paris it is not the statue of 
Napoleon that you see but that of this peasant youth who 
revolutionized our world by showing that diseases are caused 
by microbes. Pasteur was at first a poor student in chemistry 
and struggled with ill health for twenty-seven years after his 


THE NEW SCIENCE 19 


first paralytic stroke. Today science is able to make our milk 
safe; we are free from many scourges and have conquered 
chicken cholera, anthrax, rabies, and other diseases because 
of him. As the one who developed the use of antiseptics and 
sterilization, Pasteur became the father of modern surgery, 
and millions now living owe their lives to him, perhaps includ- 
ing ourselves. Our industry, agriculture and almost every 
branch of science and every area of human life owe him a 
debt of gratitude. Yet Pasteur is typical of thousands who 
toil in science, in a passionate search for truth, for the 
making of a better world. The medal presented to him on 
his seventieth birthday bore the words, “To Pasteur—France 
and Humanity Grateful.” 

Edison was a backward pupil sustained only by his 
mother’s faith. Since his first patent in 1868 at the age of 
twenty-one, he has taken out more than fourteen hundred 
for his inventions in the last fifty-eight years. The scientist 
today by his aid measures the heat from distant stars. 
Thanks to him we can now send sixteen messages at a time 
on the telegraph he perfected. We daily talk over his com- 
pletion of Bell’s telephone, we listen to his phonograph, read 
in the light of his incandescent bulb, attend his motion picture 
show, use his storage battery and profit in many other ways 
by his contributions to our common life. 

Booker Washington found a promising Negro student in 
chemistry. He could offer him no well-equipped laboratory 
for his experiments but only the old barren hill upon which 
Tuskegee was built. It was waste land of sand and clay pur- 
chased at fifty cents an acre. Out of this sand, the now 
celebrated Professor Carver has produced some eighty-five 
chemical and commercial products ; from the clay he has pro- 
duced over two hundred. The barren soil yielded at first 
only two products, peanuts and sweet potatoes. Out of the 
former Professor Carver has made over a hundred products, 
and from the sweet potato a hundred and twelve. Many of 
these doubtless have great commercial possibilities and utili- 
ties as yet unsuspected for human life. This is true of every 
ounce of matter in the earth. When we have broken up the 


20 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


atom and released the incalculable stores of energy which 
are imprisoned there, available for our use, it will usher in a 
new age which will make our era of coal and steam almost 
as primitive as the stone age seems to us today. With a 
pound weight of radioactive substance we can release as much 
energy as from a hundred and fifty tons of coal. Or we can 
take this pound of radioactive substance in another form and 
make it do the work of a hundred and fifty tons of dynamite 
for construction or destruction. With a few pounds weight 
we could blow up any city in the world, or we could harness 
this power and begin to build a better and more humane 
social order. Well may Professor Soddy of Oxford say, “I 
trust this discovery will not be made until it is clearly under- 
stood what is involved. And yet it is a discovery that is 
sooner or later bound to come. Conceivably it might be 
made tomorrow.” At this moment in California and else- 
where “‘a combined attack financed and equipped on a huge 
scale is being launched on the problem of the structure of 
matter.” 

Not only every living organism but every ounce and atom 
of matter is, as Walt Whitman said of the mouse, “‘miracle 
enough” for the wonder of us all. Take one of the humblest 
of substances like coal tar, a waste, a nuisance, the last 
by-product of the gas and coke industry. Dr. Slosson has 
shown us some of its uses.1_ Fifty years ago a London school 
boy named Perkin, working at home on his Easter vacation, 
failed in an experiment, but found some black, sticky stuff 
in his beaker. His discovery of the first coal-tar dye in 1856 
soon led to 925 more dyes to add beauty to our world. Next 
the chemist began to learn from the flowers and produced 
millions of dollars worth of the finest of perfumes from this 
evil smelling tar. Next it yielded a number of chemicals to 
cure our various diseases, and fertilizer for our farms. Out 
of this same tar already 200,000 distinct organic compounds 
can be made. | 


From this same substance that produces the most delicate 


*“Science Remaking the World,” p. 50. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 21 


perfumes came the high explosives used in the war. Next 
the chemists produced from this black waste, indigo, the royal 
purple, and the red dye, alizarin. Enough has been saved on 
this last little-known substance “to pay for all the university 
laboratories of the world.” Out of this black mass were dis- 
covered the chemicals that in nature “furnish a large part of 
the beauty and pleasure of the world, of the flavors of its 
fruits, the perfumes of its flowers, the colors of its plants.” 
The staining of its dyes enabled Koch in 1882 to discover the 
bacillus of tuberculosis and the following year the germ of 
cholera. Then followed the typhoid fever germ and the 
serum to prevent it. After 605 failures salvarsan was dis- 
covered to cure millions of innocent sufferers of one of the 
worst scourges of the world. Next followed the discovery 
of the cause of diphtheria, then hookworm, which was 
sapping the energies of eighty per cent of the inhabitants of 
some tropical regions. One of the last coal-tar products, 
“Bayer 205,” reported as a sure cure for sleeping sickness, 
was offered by the Germans to trade for all their lost African 
colonies. And this is only one of thousands of products of 
black coal-tar. Yet Dr. Slosson assures us that “coal-tar is 
not peculiar in its ability to contribute to man’s needs. There 
are dozens of other forms of waste that might be made as 
valuable lying around loose.” 

And all this from the “new science” in the youth of our 
blundering, adolescent world which has not yet begun to learn 
to live.t Surely here is a challenge to faith if we have eyes 


*The triumphs of the nineteenth century will pale before the 
greater discoveries of the future. Hudson Maxim, the scientist, 
pictures our world fifty years from now. It will be a day of almost 
universal air travel made safe by automatic equilibration; we shall 
have our own aerial limousines. Great cities will rise half a mile in 
height as we go up in express elevators to the parks and playgrounds 
and artificial lakes and landing platforms for airplanes above. With 
speaking, stereoscopic motion pictures, all events of importance will 
be visible as they occur at distant points on the globe. With as much 
power in a tiny gram of lead as in the burning of 3,500,000 tons of 
coal we shall release what we need of the power locked in every 
molecule of matter, freeing us from excessive physical labor. We 
shall end the disgrace of the idle rich and the unemployed poor both 
of which are unnecessary. We shall master all disease germs and the 


22 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


to see the unfolding ministry of science in the years to come. 
But, as in the case of coal-tar, we may use our knowledge as 
an explosive to destroy humanity, or as a means of exorbitant 
profit for a privileged few, or to minister to the healing and 
health, the beauty and fragrance and joy of human life. 

The brief space of a single chapter does not permit even 
the most superficial examination of the few areas we have 
touched upon, showing the conquests of modern science. 
Even this glance makes it evident, however, that there is a 
new science and that it brings incalculable consequences. 
Already Einstein has added a fourth dimension to our world. 
But more important than all its inventions is the spirit of 
invention itself which, as a master key, science has placed 
in our hands to unlock the secrets of nature. There is a new 
spirit which science has brought us.* 


The History of Scvence 


Early science had its beginnings in the practical affairs of 
men as they sought to become acquainted with their sur- 
roundings and to utilize the forces of nature. Learning their 
first science from the continent of Asia, the Greeks separated 
the scientific from the religious elements in life and began to 
develop an ordered knowledge of natural phenomena, soon 


only two causes of death will be accident and old age. Criminals, 
defectives and degenerates will be weeded out of society. For war 
we shall substitute judicial processes. We are only at the dawn of 
our young, adolescent world. “Success Magazine,’ December, 1925. 

* Prof. Whitehead points out that more important than any isolated 
discovery of the new science were the new ideas introduced into 
theoretical science as the basis of our modern world view. Among 
these are 1. the idea of continuity, showing that physical activity 
pervades all space; 2. the idea of atomicity, finding and utilizing the 
atom in chemistry, the cell in biology, the organism in disease and 
its cure, and the electron in physics; 3. the doctrine of the conservation 
of energy, showing the permanence underlying all change; and 4. the 
doctrine of evolution providing for change and progress and the 
emergence of new forms of life, as we witness the impressive spec- 
tacle of all creation on the march. The four ideas combined not 
only made possible “an orgy of scientific triumph” but are bringing 
about “the entire transformation of human habits and human men- 
tality.” See A. N. Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World,” 
pp. 141-147, 300. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 23 


after 600 B. C. By 440 B. C. Democritus had developed his 
theory of atoms, as an attempt to make the universe intel- 
ligible. We must look to Aristotle (c. 340 B. C.) as the 
father of the sciences. He was a real naturalist, he grasped 
a coherent cosmic theory and mapped out in broad outline 
the sciences for later development. Aristotle’s work was 
followed by the geometry of Euclid (c. 300 B. C.) and the 
experiments of Archimedes beginning the exact science of 
mechanics (287-212 B. C.). 

The brilliant beginnings of unfettered philosophic thought 
and scientific investigation of the early Greeks were not fol- 
lowed up. More than seventeen centuries after the rise of 
Greek thought, Europe in 1500 knew less of science than in 
the days of Aristotle or Archimedes. The scientific awaken- 
ing began about three centuries ago. The period between 
1500 and 1700 witnessed the gradual transition to a new 
scientific attitude. We might take 1543 as the date of the 
birth of modern science when the two great books of Coper- 
nicus and Vesalius were published, or 1600, when Bruno was 
burned at the stake in Rome for his modern views. 

Ten great names seem to stand out as makers of freedom 
in the modern world of science. 


Roger Bacon 1214-1294 Kepler 1571-1630 
Copernicus 1473-1543 Descartes 1595-1650 
Bruno 1548-1600 Newton 1642-1727 
Francis Bacon 1561-1639 Darwin 1809-1882 
Galileo 1564-1642 Einstein 1879- 


+ Aristotle (384-332 B. C.), as perhaps the world’s greatest meta- 
physician, was at once the culmination of Greek speculative philosophy 
and the forerunner of modern science. The mere enumeration of his 
principal works, which were lost to the world for 187 years, shows 
the range of his knowledge. He wrote upon physics, metaphysics, 
religion, law, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, meteorology, natural history, 
botany, zoology, anatomy, medicine, mechanics, ethics, politics, physi- 
ology, psychology, poetry and literature. For two thousand years 
(c. 350 B. C—1i650 A. D.) the fundamental bases of his system of 
physics remained unshaken, as follows: Matter is continuous. It is 
made up of the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The 
earth is a sphere, fixed as the centre of the universe, which is 
spherical. The stars and planets move with uniform velocity i in con- 
centric circles around the earth. The universe is finite. This gave 


24 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Roger Bacon, the English Franciscan monk, makes the first 
insistent demand for “experimental science.’ He was twice 
sentenced to imprisonment because of his scientific theories.” 

Copernicus, devout canon of the church and astronomer, pub- 
lishes on the day of his death his new theory of the heavens 
which places the sun and not the earth at the center of the 
universe, and lays the axe at the root of medieval science. For 
ten thousand years of human thought the earth had been 
counted the center. Now man was on a second-grade planet 
encircling a slow-moving, second-grade sun, launched on an 
incalculable adventure in a vast universe. 

Bruno, who dared to apply the philosophical implications of 
Copernicus, after some years in prison was burned at the stake 
in Rome in 1600. 

Francis Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning” and his “Novum 
Organum” shine out as the beacon lights of this seventeenth 
“century of genius’ that made the modern world. He, more 
than any other, turned the world from the subjective, deductive 
speculation of the study, to objective, inductive experiment at 
the very heart of nature. 

Galileo gave the new world the telescope and microscope and 
demonstrated from the leaning tower of Pisa the laws of 
falling bodies which overthrew the classical, Aristotelian view 
of the universe and “attacked the incorruptible and unchangeable 
heavens.” 

Isaac Newton, mathematician of Cambridge, made the greatest 
of all scientific generalizations up to that time, in his theory 
of universal gravitation, his laws of motion, and his extension 
of the order of nature to show that the law of the heavens was 
also the law of the earth, that the moon and the falling stone 
are bound by one common law. Darwin followed with the 
second great scientific generalization of human thought in the 


the first complete and coherent view of the universe. At one time, 
supported by Alexander the Great, Aristotle had over a thousand 
workers gathering facts for his scientific investigations. ‘Science, 
Religion and Reality,’ pp. 101, 102. 

*He forecasts the steamship, automobile, aeroplane, telescope, etc., 
as follows: “There may be made instruments of navigation without 
men to row them, as great ships to brooke the sea, .” . . also chariots 
that move with unspeakable force without any living creature to stirre 
them. Likewise an instrument may be made to fly withall, if one sit 
in the midst of the instrument, and do turn an engine, by which the 
wings, being artificially composed, may beat the air after the manner 
of a flying bird. . . . But physical figurations are far more strong; 
for by that may be framed looking glasses . . . perspects may be 
so framed, that things far off may seem most nigh to us.” As this 
was written in Latin some seven hundred years ago, it is no wonder 
he was counted mad. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 25 


principle of evolution, which placed the key of permanent 
progress in man’s hand, Einstein, in our own day, has made 
the third great generalization in the principle of relativity which 
we shall later examine. 


Science and Religion 


The better to understand the new science as a challenge to 
faith let us ask, What is science, what is religion, and what 
is the relation between the two? We shall find that science 
and religion are the two most powerful factors in human 
life. They are man’s two principal approaches to his en- 
vironment, his two major experiences with it. 

As J. Arthur Thomson points out, science is a kind of 
knowledge reached by methods of observation and experi- 
ment, registration and measurement. It comes to include all 
systematised, verifiable, and communicable knowledge based 
on the data of experience. As it faces the facts and problems 
of life science always asks four questions: “What is this? 
How does it work? Whence is this? How has it come ta 
be as it is?” Science shows an immediate world of intelli- 
gibility, order and continuity, but it never inquires into final 
meanings and ultimate purposes. 

Science rests upon at least three premises or principles 
which cannot be proved by the reason and for which limited 
human experience furnishes insufficient data for inductive 
demonstration: 1. The existence of the world as an objective 
fact independent of our experience; 2. the rationality of the 
universe and of our own minds, involving the possibility of 
reliable intercourse with nature and of practical results 
obtainable thereby ; 3. the uniformity and universality of law. 


7 “Science and Religion,” pp. 4, 12, 35. Science always “deals with 
judgments to which universal assent is obtainable. It is a consciously 
progressively increasing body of knowledge and doctrine. The only 
tests of validity that it can accept are the tests of experience. An 
essential process of science is the drawing up of general laws from 
the results of observation.” “Science, Religion and Reality,” p. 117. 
According to Einstein, “Science, whether natural or psychological, 
has as its object the coordinating of our experiences into a logical 
system.” Science is prevailingly descriptive while religion is inter- 
pretive. Science asks, “What is this and how does it work?” Re- 
ligion asks, “What does it mean, what is its spiritual value and end?” 


26 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Thus science rests on the three undemonstrable premises of 
objectivity, rationality and universality.* 

Modern religion like science rests upon similar premises: 
1. The reality of a spiritual world, of a source and ground 
of the visible universe, that is, the reality of God; 2. the rea- 
sonableness and reality of man’s religious capacities and 
experiences and the possibility of intercourse with a God who 
responds to personal relations; 3. the reality of a Kingdom 
of God, of the possibilities of faith and hope and love ina 
universal spiritual order. 

It is not always remembered that both science and religion 
rest ultimately upon foundations of faith. Both must start 
with unverifiable hypotheses which must be tested out in 
experience. Both must adapt themselves to a changing world. 
It is true of both science and religion as Huxley said, “New 
truths begin as heresies and end as superstitions.’ The veri- 
fication of truth in both is limited and relative. Neither can 
prove any ultimates or finalities. 

The realization of these common limitations should make 
both science and religion charitable toward each other. It 
should teach a humility far removed from dogmatism. The 
whole of truth is not monopolized by any one point of view. 
Though we believe that both have access to reality, science 
deals with abstractions, symbols, numbers or equivalents 
rather than with reality itself. Science gives us descriptive 
“counters” or shorthand reports rather than reality. Thus 
we do not know what matter or electricity are. Both mean to 
us only ways that energy has of behaving. We never ex- 
perience matter directly but only our own sensation of it. 
We do not see matter, we only know the physical sensation 
reported in our own brain. We do not hear sound, but only 


* Professor Aliotta of Naples says, “The sciences in fact start from 
certain undemonstrable principles, which we accept freely because 
only by accepting them is practical life possible. . . . The postulate 
of the uniformity of the laws of Nature . . . is an undemonstrable 
principle which has been doubted by certain philosophers, by Hume, 
for example. Yet generally speaking, all men believe in it because if 
that principle is not admitted practical life is impossible.” “Science, 
Religion and Reality,” p. 170. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 27 


the sensation conveyed along the auditory nerve. We never 
touched, handled or grasped matter, but know only our own 
sensation made by this external force or resistance. 

Professor Eddington gives a fine illustration of the limi- 
tations of science. Suppose an examiner in physics sets a 
problem to calculate the time of descent of an object on an 
inclined plane as follows: “An elephant slides down a grassy 
hillside,” etc. Now the elephant is irrelevant to our problem. 
We merely take its weight on the scale at two tons. For 
the grassy slope we substitute an angle of sixty degrees and 
the coefficient of friction. The watch will measure the time 
of descent as sixteen seconds and the problem for physics is 
soon solved. But we have merely derived an abstraction 
from three other abstractions of a scale-reading, the coeffi- 
cient of friction and the reading of our watch. What single 
reality have we grasped? Have we really grappled with the 
problem of matter, the meaning of gravitation behind the 
reading of our scale, the meaning of life in the elephant, or 
of mind or of man himself as represented by the investi- 
gator? At every point reality eludes us and we have nothing 
left but an abstraction of the readings of our instruments. 
Thus science never yields ultimate reality. To final questions 
of why, whence, whither, to ultimate questions of meaning 
and value, it can give no answer. “Where then is boasting? 
It is excluded.” Both science and religion are founded on 
faith. They deal with the little known, the vast unknown; 
the finite fraction seen, the infinite unseen. 


The Conflict Between Science and Religion 


Since science and religion are both relative and not abso- 
lute, since both are developing and both imperfect, it is 
natural that there should be conflict between them, especially 
in their early stages. Dean Inge maintains that to this day 
“there is a very serious conflict, and the challenge was pre- 
sented not in the age of Darwin but in the age of Copernicus 
and Galileo”’ some four hundred years ago. He believes it 
was the fratricidal wars of religion that made the fatal rift 
between religion and science. A part of the sad record of 


28 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


that conflict will be found in the two massive volumes of 
President White’s “History of the Warfare Between Science 
and Theology.” 

For considerably more than a thousand years the word of 
the Church was authoritative and final in all realms of life, 
including astronomy, geology, geography and other sciences. 
In 535 A. D. the monk Cosmos wrote his “Christian Topog- 
raphy” maintaining that the world was a flat parallelogram 
whose length was double its breadth. In 1560 the theologians 
succeeded in suppressing an Academy for the Study of 
Nature at Naples. Bitter was the persecution received by 
Kepler, Descartes and Newton. Father Caccini insisted that 
“geometry is of the devil,’ and that “mathematicians should 
be banished as the authors of all heresies.” Chemistry was 
looked upon as one of the “seven devilish arts.” “For over 
a thousand years surgery was considered dishonorable.” 
Inoculation was counted a “diabolical operation.” In Scot- 
land this practice was referred to by a group of ministers as 
“flying in the face of Providence,’ and “endeavoring to 
baffle a Divine judgment.” In Boston it was said that inocu- 
lation is “an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, 
whose right it is to wound and smite.” Even for John 
Wesley “giving up witchcraft” was “in effect giving up the 
Bible.” For some seventeen hundred years belief in devils 
and demon-possession was a cardinal doctrine of the Chris- 
tian faith. Based upon the command, “Thou shalt not suffer 


* When Copernicus’ dectrine was verified by the crude telescope of 
Galileo the church issued an edict forbidding the circulation of “all 
books which affirm the motion of the earth.” Cardinal Bellarmin in 
opposing Copernicus said that “his pretended disccvery vitiates the 
whole Christian plan of salvation.” Father Lecazre declared, “it 
casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation.” Father Melchior 
Inchofer was of the opinion that “argument against the immortality 
of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation, should be 
tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves.” 
The Catholic Church was not alone in this attitude. “All branches,” 
said President White of Cornell University, “of the Protestant 
Church—Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican—vied with each other in de- 
nouncing the Copernican doctrine as contrary to Scripture; and, at a 
later period, the Puritans showed the same tendency.” 


eS ee ee 


THE NEW SCIENCE 29 


a witch to live’! thousands of innocent persons accused of 
witchcraft were put to death. 

Giordano Bruno was hunted from land to land, imprisoned 
and tortured for six years, then burned alive on February 17, 
1600, and his ashes scattered to the winds. The onslaught 
was then centered on Galileo. After a courageous struggle, 
as a broken old man of seventy, Galileo was forced to recant 
and repudiate his “heresies.”* Throughout his remaining 
days he was subjected to continuous persecution and abuse. 
Not until 1822 did the Catholic Church give permission to 
teach “the motion of the earth.’ But we may well ask which 
was the more pathetic, Galileo’s trial in the seventeenth cen- 
tury or the Scopes’ trial in Tennessee in the twentieth? The 
anti-evolution laws of Tennessee have been followed by 
similar legislation in Florida, Mississippi and Oklahoma, and 
by the action of the State Text Book Commission of Texas. 


*Exodus 22:18. 

?The sentence of the Inquisition runs as follows: “You have 
believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the 
Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the centre of the world 
and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does 
move and is not the centre of the world; and that an opinion can be 
held and defended as probable after it has been decreed contrary to 
the Holy Scriptures. . . . It is our pleasure that you be absolved 
provided that, you abjure, curse and detest the said errors and heresies, 
and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and 
Apostolic Church. . . . We condemn you to the prison of this Holy 
Office. . . . We order you during the next three years to recite, 
once a week, the seven penitential psalms.” Luther thus denounced 
Copernicus: “People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to 
show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the 
sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some 
new system, which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This 
fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy, but sacred 
Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and 
not the earth.’ Calvin asked, “Who will venture to place the 
authority of Copernicus above that of Holy Scripture?” After 
Servetus, the leading naturalist of his day, has escaped from a Catholic 
prison, Calvin was responsible for his being burned at the stake. The 
indictment against Servetus specified that he had described the Holy 
Land as rather sterile instead of flowing with milk and honey. He 
also held other unsound views. “So they burned Servetus in the city 
square; and the war was on, the three hundred years’ war between 
evidence and authority.” Campanella was imprisoned for twenty- 
seven years and detained three more in the chambers of the Inquisition, 


30 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


If the churches, Protestant and Catholic, had the power 
which they possessed at the time of the Inquisition, does any 
one doubt that many liberals would meet the same fate as 
Galileo and Bruno? 

We do not disguise the fact that the new science is a 
challenge to faith. As far as we can see, one must accept 
either a medieval or a modern view of the world. Thousands 
have found the solution of the difficulty in maintaining a 
vital religious faith while making the transition to the modern 
viewpoint. They would take the Bible as Galileo suggested, 
not as a scientific authority, but as a moral and spiritual 
guide. They are then able to accept both the progressive 
spiritual revelation of the Bible culminating in Jesus Christ, 
and also the findings of modern science. 

If one rejects the findings of modern science it should be 
clearly recognized what is involved. Here history throws 
light upon our problem as it was raised by Copernicus and 
Galileo nearly four hundred years ago, when they challenged 
the classic theory of Aristotle and what was supposed to be 
the orthodox scriptural view. The present conflict between 
science and theology is only the last of at least five great 
issues that have arisen between them. 

1. The first was between the conceptions of a flat or a 
spherical earth. Those who maintained the inerrancy of 
Scripture contended that there was no warrant for a round 
world. Augustine held that the belief that there were 
dwellers upon the other side of the earth was contrary to 
the Bible. Then Columbus, although bitterly opposed by the 
ecclesiastical authorities, made his great experiment in his 
voyage across the western ocean. Finally the fleet of 
Magellan completed the circumnavigation of the globe, and 
modern science was vindicated against a literal interpretation 
of certain texts of Scripture in the mistaken belief that the 
Bible was intended as an infallible guide in matters of science. 

2. The second controversy was as to whether the sun or 
the earth was the center of our solar system. Many church 
leaders and those who held to a literal interpretation of the 
Scripture bitterly opposed the theory that the earth moved 


4 
— - - 


THE NEW SCIENCE dl 


around the sun. Copernicus’ theories were condemned by 
the Inquisition. He held his views in secret for thirty-six 
years because of the opposition of the ecclesiastical leaders. 
In 1610 Galileo proved that the theory of Copernicus was 
right. As we have seen he was condemned for “blasphemy 
and atheism” for saying that the Scripture was not a scien- 
tific authority, but a moral guide. He was imprisoned by 
the Inquisition for ten years and refused burial in conse- 
crated ground; but though he was compelled to recant upon 
his knees, the earth moved just the same. Science was vin- 
dicated, and the outworn medieval theory based upon a 
literal interpretation of the Bible not only went down to 
defeat, but estranged many from the faith. 

3. The third great issue came with the discovery of the 
law of gravitation by Newton, based upon Kepler’s laws. 
The discovery was condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities 
as “natural law.” The theologians opposed Newton in his 
day just as they did Darwin at a later period. One result 
of this blind opposition to the law of gravitation was the 
wide growth of skepticism during the eighteenth century 
under Voltaire and others, which might have been avoided by 
a more reasonable faith in harmony with the discoveries of 
science. Again the literalists lost the battle, and thousands 
were alienated from the Christian faith by their mistaken and 
fruitless opposition to science. 

4. The next controversy was between the exponents of 
the discoveries of geology and the supporters of the conven- 
tional orthodox chronology established in 1650 by Archbishop 
Usher. Dr. Lightfoot of Cambridge maintained that crea- 
tion had taken place 4004 B. C., on October 23, at nine 
o'clock in the morning. The followers of this supposed 
Scriptural view bitterly opposed the discoveries of geology 
which traced back the history of the earth through millions 
of years, showing that the antiquity of man was far greater 
than the orthodox system of chronology had maintained. 
Again modern science won, and ecclesiastical orthodoxy was 
defeated. Once again many were driven from the faith. 

5. The fifth issue is the question of evolution. As in the 


32 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


four preceding issues, theology has crystallized around an 
outworn scientific view. Darwin’s original theory of natural 
selection has been found inadequate to account for all the 
facts, but the theory of evolution has been supported by an 
overwhelming mass of evidence which we shall proceed to 
examine. 

In all the five great conflicts between science and theology, 
orthodox theologians believing in a literal interpretation of 
Scripture have opposed science. In each case they have not 
only been defeated, but thousands have been estranged from 
religion who might have been held if confronted with a rea- 
sonable faith, fully in harmony with modern science. 


The Theory of Evolution 


One of the most crucial questions both for science and 
religion is the theory of evolution. There is room here for 
honest difference of opinion. ‘To begin with, all who are 
Christians may start upon common ground—‘“In the begin- 
ning, God.” ‘Together we believe that the world is his and 
he made it. The question is, was it made suddenly or 
gradually? The two theories of special creation by divine 
decree and that of gradual evolution are almost equally old. 
Both were held by the ancient Greeks several centuries before 
the Christian era. It was not until the sixteenth century that 
certain ecclesiastical leaders adopted the former view as 
authoritative. If, as Mr. H. H. Lane in his “Evolution and 
Christian Faith’ points out, gravitation be only the divine 
mode of sustentation, and evolution the divine mode of crea- 
tion; if evolution is God’s way of working in nature, and 
Christianity his way of working in the spiritual world; if 
we are all agreed that it is God’s world and that he is in the 
whole process from beginning to end, cannot equally earnest 
Christians agree to differ as to whether the world was created 
in a moment of time, in six days of twenty-four hours each, 
or through a long and noble process of gradual development ? 

Putting all theories aside, let us first examine the facts in 
the case and then see which theory best fits these facts. 
Apparently there is widespread evidence of ordered change 


THE NEW SCIENCE 33 


in nature, so that it might almost be said that “nothing is 
constant but change.” And this change seems to have been 
continuous and progressive according to certain laws, from 
the simple to the more complex structures, and from lower 
to higher forms of life. We observe this progressive develop- 
ment in several realms. 

1. In the inorganic realm in the making of worlds. Before 
our very eyes today we see the heaviest of the ninety-two 
elements disintegrating and being transformed into simpler 
elements ; and apparently the spectroscope reveals the reverse 
process going on in the younger stars which show only a 
few of the lighter elements, but which are perhaps building 
up all the ninety-two elements, most of which we find in the 
older stars or suns. The record of the rocks beneath our 
feet apparently shows the fashioning of the earth by slow 
processes in strata, which contain fossil remains of life which 
gradually rose from lower to higher forms. And these 
processes seem to be continuing today and may be read by 
modern geologists as the successive chapters of a book. By 
the fossil remains of plants and animals we can almost date 
the strata of successive ages. By the layers of deposit in the 
Baltic Sea we can count the exact number of years since the 
last ice age, just as we can tell the age of the great redwoods 
in California by the annual rings which register the tree’s 
growth. The clear record of the rocks shows that there is a 
gradual progression age by age to ever-higher forms of life. 
Many groups of animals reached their climax ages ago and 
became extinct. New groups arise at the close of a geologic 
period when vast climatic changes take place; these become 
the dominant groups of the next period. One increasing 
purpose is recorded in the successive chapters of the record 
of the rocks. 

2. Much clearer than the inorganic is the record of ordered 
progress of orgamc life. Instead of a few fixed and per- 
manent species separated in watertight compartments, we 
see a process apparently advancing from matter through life 
to consciousness which culminates in man. In the older and 
lower strata of the rocks we find imbedded the remains of 


34 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


simpler forms of life, which were slowly creeping upward 
from vegetable and lower animal forms to fishes, amphibians, 
reptiles, birds, later mammals, the higher primates and finally 
man. We here see racial movement in a definite direction, 
producing some two hundred and fifty thousand species of 
backboneless animals and later twenty-five thousand species 
of backboned animals, gradually advancing in differentiation 
and integration to ever-higher forms of life. We see these 
intergrading with links between many of the species, and 
with the change of climate or environment we see species 
now changing before our eyes. 


We see this gradual development recorded and preserved in 
hundreds of perfect specimens, as in the case of the horse or 
the elephant. For instance, in the rocks of an early geologic 
age we find fossils of eohippus, the first horse, about eleven 
inches high, with five long toes fitted for running through 
the deep marsh grass of that era. As the climate becomes 
drier, the grass shorter and the earth harder, we find these now 
useless toes gradually disappearing. We next find a slightly 
larger animal with four toes on the front feet and three behind. 
Gradually the toes grow smaller, shrink and are lost, and we 
have left only the middle toe with its developed nail or hoof; 
but behind there are still tiny vestiges of some others. You 
can place a hundred skeletons of the horse in a row, differing 
each from the other only slightly, rising in height from eleven 
inches to the swift race horse and heavy draft horse of today, 
about sixty-four inches in height, or six times the height of 
the first horse. The fossil record of man is a little less com- 
plete than the horse, but more complete than many species. 
The oldest remains are about half a million years old. 

Now we may either suppose that God by special creation 
intervened in succeeding ages to create a hundred slightly 
differing kinds of horses, each in turn dying out, or that a 
continuous process similar to that going on in our breeding 
farms today has been in operation. Which seems the more 
probable? In either case we may believe that God has been 
equally at work, in the one by intermittent special creation, 
in the other by continuous process through natural laws. Which 
method is he using in the universe today ?* 


_ *On the island of St. Helena today there are one hundred and 
twenty-nine species of beetles. Of these, all but one are found 
nowhere else. Do we conclude that God specially created one hundred 
and twenty-eight species specially for this island alone? The evi- 
dence of geographical distribution points to evolution at every point. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 35 


3. Let us note the development of the individual, in man 
and animal. No one emerges fully formed, but each develops 
from a single cell. Before birth each life reads like a con- 
densed recapitulation of the racial story of the past. You 
can hardly tell the early embryo of a shark, a chicken and a 
man apart. Long before birth all three have gills for breath- 
ing under water, a long tail and the blood circulation peculiar 
to the fish. Before birth these gradually disappear in the 
human embryo, which at one stage is covered with a kind of 
dark fur. Although all these disappear the gill-slits remain 
in the higher animals throughout life, though they are never 
used before or after birth. There are a hundred and eighty 
vestiges, like our appendix, that are of no use to us now, 
which are in fact often a danger or cause of death, but which 
had a functional use in a previous ancestral form of life. 
Similar‘vestiges are found in the now unused hind limbs of 
the whale and of the python, the thumb of the bird, and the 
splint bones of the horse. 

Only one theory seems to fit all the facts in the case and 
that is accepted by practically all scientists, modern physicians 
and those who have carefully studied biology.t That is the 
theory of gradual development, or evolution.? If they hold 
this theory, Christians need not believe that they are de- 
scended from the monkey, but from God, who has been 
immanent in all life, slowly developing from the monad to 
the moral person, from the single cell to man. However, 
“the real dignity of man consists not in his origin, but in 
what he is and in what he may become.” 

If now the Biblical record is taken literally as actual history 
and exact science, how can it be reconciled with the facts in 
the case? In the first chapter of Genesis, we have a world 


* Prof. J. B. S. Haldane of Cambridge says, “No competent biolo- 
gist doubts the reality of evolution.” 

* The scientist J. Arthur Thomson in his Yale lectures “Concerning 
Evolution,” in the “Outline of Science,” and “Science and Religion,” 
defines evolution as “a continuous natural process of racial change in 
a definite direction whereby distinctively new individuals arise, take 
root and flourish, alongside of or in place of the originative stock.” 
“Concerning Evolution,” p. 187. 


36 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


apparently created out of nothing in six literal days of 
twenty-four hours each with its morning and evening, with 
no hint on the part of the writer of geological ages. We 
have vegetation created before the sun and stars. In the 
second chapter and following we have a wholly different 
account of creation in a different order, not in six days but 
in a day. Woman is made out of the rib of a man. A 
serpent talks with the woman and tempts her. We have in 
the Old Testament the conception of a flat earth and its four 
corners. Heaven is a place above and hell a place below the 
earth, which is apparently always conceived as the center of 
the universe around which the sun revolves.1 The “firma- 
ment’’ is a solid dome above. Job says, “Hast thou with 
him spread out the sky which is strong and as a molten 
looking glass?”? At many points there is a flat contradiction 
between Scripture and modern science if we do not follow 
Galileo’s warning and take the Bible not as a scientific author- 
ity but as a moral guide. 


This old world-view was gradually shattered by the new sci- 
ence. Astronomy showed our earth as one of the smallest of 
the planets, revolving around our sun as one of the smallest of 
the stars in a vast universe. Later, geology and kindred sciences 
pushed back the six days of creation to a record of more than 
six hundred million years of evolving life upon our planet. 
Biology next traced the development of man as part of a vast 


* The teaching regarding the universe that was held in the ancient 
and medieval world is still given in some conservative quarters. 
Wilbur Voliva, overseer of Zion and head of the Christian Apostolic 
Church, has completed the fixing of the dimensions of the flat world, 
the existence of which is now taught in the Zion schools. The sky 
is a vast dome of solid material from which the sun, moon and stars 
are hung like chandeliers from a ceiling. The edges of the dome, he 
explained to the congregation at Shiloh Tabernacle, rest on the wall 
which surrounds the flat world. “That is the plain teaching of the 
whole word of God,” Mr. Voliva said. “The firmament above our 
heads is a solid structure and the stars are points of light, that is all. 
They are not worlds, they are not suns. So-called science is a lot 
of silly rot, and so is so-called medical science and all the rest of their 
so-called sciences. The sun is a small body about forty miles in 
diameter and located only 3,000 miles from the earth,” that is, about 
as far as New York is from San Francisco. Zion, Illinois, Feb. 1 
1922. Quoted from “Facing the Crisis,” p. 115. 

*Job 17:18. Genesis 1:6-8, 14-17. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 37 


evolution of life from simple to complex forms, Historical 
criticism subjected the Bible to the same scientific examination 
as all other books and showed its progressive historical develop- 
ment, comparing with its accounts the similar stories of creation, 
the flood, etc., found among the nations surrounding the 
Hebrews. The study of comparative religions discovered whole 
ranges of truth in other faiths. Next came “the revolt of the 
modern conscience” against supposedly divine decrees condemn- 
ing to eternal punishment multitudes of men even before their 
birth, together with the great bulk of mankind who had never 
had the opportunity of hearing the Christian message. We 
may have lost a man-made tradition devised in the childhood 
of the race, but have we not gained a view of God and the 
universe for nobler in its sweep and finer in quality? As Henry 
Drummond said, “The idea of an immanent God, which is the 
God of evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional 
wonder-worker who is the god of our old theology.” 


Evolution has been the master key to unlock the portal to 
the modern world. The able but tentative work of Darwin 
has had to be revised. The fact of progress or evolutionary 
development will remain, though Darwin’s theory to account 
for the fact by natural selection based on the struggle for 
existence needs to be supplemented by other factors, some 
of which he mentioned and others which have been disclosed 
by later research. Many of Darwin’s followers at first laid 
too exclusive emphasis upon the biological element of nutri- 
tion and the struggle for life. A complementary aspect of 
evolution, the struggle for the life of others, or the mutual- 
aid principle, needs to be stressed as it has been by Drum- 
mond, Kropotkin, Benjamin Kidd and others. This has 
great significance for the higher values of life and has 
contributed powerfully to the aesthetic, the altruistic, the 
cooperative, the moral and religious life of man. 


The World of Atoms 


Professor Millikan in “The Electron,” Bertrand Russell 
in his “A B C of Atoms” and other modern writers have 
enabled us to look into the astronomy of the atom just as 
the astronomer with his telescope shows us the solar system. 
In fact, each atom proves to be a little solar system in itself 


38 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


with a sun and planets. The sun is the nucleus of the atom, 
the planets are the electrons. 

The atom of hydrogen, as the lightest and simplest of the 
elements, is composed of a nucleus consisting of a single 
proton (or unit of positive electric charge) and one electron 
(or unit of negative electric charge) revolving around it. 
The protons and electrons are the bricks or building stones 
of the universe. For all the elements consist merely of 
negative and positive charges of electricity in various com- 
pounds. Matter is thus nothing but electricity, or stabilized 
energy. Bohr showed that the electrons revolve in orbits.* 
In the laboratory of the stars these heavier atoms are prob- 
ably now being built up out of the simpler electric charges. 
The heavier radioactive elements are in unstable equilibrium 
and in disintegrating are giving off terrific quantities of 
energy. 

We can now list the elements from hydrogen with one 
electron, helium with 2, lithium 3, beryllium 4, boron 5, 
carbon 6, nitrogen 7, oxygen 8 revolving electrons, etc., up 
to iron with 26, gold 79, lead 82, radium with 88 revolving 
electrons, and uranium, the heaviest element, with 92. 

Take the gram of radium which American scientists pre- 
sented to Madame Curie. It is shooting off every second 
three different discharges of electric energy. 1. Every second 
it is bombarding surrounding space with 145,000 billion 
alpha particles, or helium atoms, moving at 12,000 miles per 
second or twelve thousand times the speed of the Big Bertha 
projectiles in the late war. 2. It is pouring out like a 
machine gun 71,000 billion lighter beta particles, or electrons, 
at ten times greater speed than the alpha particles, at a 
velocity of almost 186,000 miles, or about seven times round 
the earth, ina second. 3. It is pouring forth gamma waves, 
like those used in radio, only of shorter wave-length, at the 


*See Haas “The New Physics,” p. 101 for the list of the 92 ele- 
ments. According to the periodic law, the elements are arranged in 
a scale of ninety-two places. Eighty-eight of these have already been 
discovered and we know the exact atomic weights of the four missing 
elements that will complete this series. é 


THE NEW SCIENCE 39 


rate of thirty billions per second.1_ The first particles shoot 
right through glass and through hundreds of thousands of 
other atoms unhindered, showing that all these atoms fromi 
hydrogen to lead are mostly empty space. It is the energy 
of the electricity that makes them seem hard and solid. 

After the heaviest element, uranium, has shot off one alpha 
particle, it becomes another element, protactinium. After it 
has ejected three, it has become radium, and when it has shot 
off five more it has become lead. Radium changes one 
2500th part in a year, so that Madame Curie’s gram will 
operate powerfully for 2500 years. According to some 
authorities, uranium lasts eight billion years. The heat given 
off by one gram of radium is 300,000 times greater than that 
produced by the burning of one gram of coal. This is the 
secret of the energy poured forth by the sun. \ 

Dr. Millikan has succeeded in stripping off the outer 
electrons of a number of elements like carbon, nitrogen and. 
oxygen. If lead could be stripped of a few of its outer 
electrons it would leave gold. But this precious gold would 
be of small value compared to the power we could generate 
if we could extract and harness this subatomic energy. So 
terrific is this power that a tiny bit of lead, of a gram’s 
weight, could lift a million tons a hundred yards. To stop 
one revolving electron would require eighty horsepower, 
although the mass of the electron is 1800 times lighter than 
the atom of hydrogen. If you could knock out one electron 
from each atom in a glass of water it would wreck the earth. 
We can watch in the laboratory the growth of radium, and 
then of lead, out of uranium, and photograph the track of 
the projectiles which are being emitted. The electrons on 
occasion jump from one regular orbit to another, giving out 
energy as light as they pass to an inner orbit, or receiving it 
to pass to an outer orbit. 

One of the most unexpected discoveries of modern science 
is that the energy so radiated or absorbed is measured in 
definite units called quanta. The weights of the atoms are 
whole numbers. They advance by definite units. Every- 


*R, A. Millikan, “Science and Life.” 


40 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


where there is order and system. The quanta take us down 
to the smallest quantities known to science, relativity takes 
us to the largest. Eddington, the Cambridge astronomer, 
suggests that there is probably an exact relation between the 
circumference of the universe, the greatest length in nature, 
and the radius of the electron, the least length in nature.* 

Whether we view the vast spaces and regular orbits of 
astronomical bodies, or the equal wonder of the little 
microcosm of the atom, can we not say with Darwin that 
the intellect refuses to look upon the universe as the work 
of chance? If, ‘“‘God’s in the atom, all’s right with the 
world,” from the electron to the limits of the ordered uni- 
verse, does not the new science constitute a challenge to 
faith? Does it not make a positive contribution to religion? 
The new world of the atom has ended the old materialism. 
We are dealing no longer with “dead matter” but.a living 
universe. Like the stars in their courses, the atoms seem 
to sing, “the hand that made us is divine.” 


What Is Relativity? 


Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. He belongs 
to the same race as Jesus of Nazareth, Moses and Isaiah; 
as Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Heine, Disraeli and Bergson; the 
race that has contributed most in the moral and spiritual 
sphere to the enrichment of human life, and, with the Greeks, 


| * Here are some calculated diameters in centimeters: 
Solar system 74,800,000,000,000. 


The earth 106,000,000. 
An atom .000,000,004 
An electron .000,000,000,000,07 


The distance from the earth to the sun is 93,000,000 miles; the mass 
of the sun is 330,000 times that of the earth; the diameter of the sun 
is 864,000 miles; the diameter of the earth 4000 miles. Our sun is 
classified as a “dwarf,” or small yellow star containing 48 chemical 
elements, as shown by the spectroscope, or more than half of those 
found in the earth. Helium was discovered in the sun in 1868, on 
the earth in 1895. _QOur nearest known star, Alpha Centauri, is at 
275,000 times the distance of our sun, or 4.3 light years. The giant 
Betelgeuse has a diameter 300 times that of our sun, and is 210 light 
years away. The whole universe is found to be composed of essen- 
tially the same atoms. It is a cosmos, a unity. “The Contributions 
of Science to Religion,” pp. 58-104. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 41 


most to human thought. He was deep in higher mathematics 
at the age of twelve and at eighteen had conceived the out- 
lines of his theory of relativity. After a professorship in 
Zurich and Berlin, he received a modest salary of $4,500 just 
to think. In 1905, while a humble engineer in the Swiss 
Patent Office, he announced his special theory of relativity, 
when he was only twenty-six years of age, and in 1915 his 
general theory. At the beginning of the war he refused to 
sign the manifesto of the German scholars denying all 
charges against Germany and finally had to go to Switzerland 
where he continued to think, as Kant had done at Konigs- 
berg, unswept by war and revolution. 

Since it was a false report that he said there were only 
twelve men in the world capable of understanding one of 
his latest papers, it is undoubtedly true only a very few could. 
Since the writer and reader of these lines would not be 
included in this favored circle, we are not ambitious to rush 
in where angels fear to tread, but only to see if we can 
understand some of the implications of Einstein’s theory 
in very simple language. 

Let us take an illustration. Let the reader as an observer 
stand where he is and face north. Take an iron bar a foot 
long, weighing one pound, and move it from right to left, 
one foot in a second. What has happened and how would 
you describe this simple event? You answer that the bar 
has moved one foot from right to left, or from east to west. 
That is true—relatively. But it is a most inadequate descrip- 
tion of what has taken place. To begin with, the bar was 
moving in four other ways and directions that you did not 
observe, but because they were not relative to you, you did 
not notice them. 

1. During the second you moved the bar one foot, from 
east to west, the bar itself was flying through space in the 
Opposite direction, as the earth revolved on its axis, at the 
rate of some 1400 feet a second, or about a thousand miles 
an hour. If so, did the bar move, as you said, one foot to 
the west or 1399 feet to the east? 


42 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


2. At the same time the bar was moving, with yourself 
and the earth, around the sun 98,000 feet during that second, 
or at the rate of nearly 70,000 miles an hour. But this motion 
was neither east nor west. 

3. During the same time the bar was moving through 
space, with the earth and the whole solar system, at the rate 
of twelve and a half miles a second,’ following the sun in 
its orbit toward the constellation of Canis Major. Yet you 
were unaware of these motions, you did not even grow dizzy, 
nor feel a breath of air against your cheek. You thought 
you were “‘standing still”—relatively, compared to the earth, 
you were. But all these motions of the bar were compara- 
tively slow. Let us notice the motion of the bar itself. 

4. The whole bar which appears to you as solid is a 
whirling mass of protons and electrons, moving with terrific 
speed. Each electron in the bar moved during that second 
over 7,000,000 feet, or seven million times the one foot that 
you moved the bar. The bar you thought was hard and 
solid is nearly all empty space, even the “hard” nucleus of 
each atom occupying less than one ten-thousandth part of 
the atom. Yet so regular is the motion of this stabilized 
energy of the bar that it seems solid. The new science tells 
us that there is nothing in the bar but electricity in motion. 

Before taking up any further motions of the bar we might 
pause to ask if your description of the event of moving the 
bar one foot in a second was adequate or “true.” 

Now suppose you step upon a moving train and throw the 
bar out of the window, relative to you it will fall backward 
to the ground, but relative to an observer on the ground it 


* Our sun is travelling 1214 miles a second, about a million miles 
a day, or four times the distance from the earth to the sun in a year. 
In 25,000 years it will have travelled 9,300,000,000,000 miles. We 
shall then behold a different landscape of the heavens. Yet ours is 
relatively a slow sun. Some suns are traveling sixteen times as fast. 
The second nearest known sun to ours will have circled round the 
ar Nice in 130,000 years. E. Slosson, “Keeping Up With Science,” 


THE NEW SCIENCE 43 


will fall forward. This is another illustration of the fact 
that motion is relative. 

Suppose you enter an aeroplane. If you could increase 
the speed to 161,000 miles per second, your bar, which you 
said was a foot long, would measure, according to Lorenz, 
just half a foot. At this speed the bar would now weigh 
not one pound but two. If you could increase the speed to 
186,000 miles per second, the speed of light, your bar would 
have no length at all but its weight or mass would be infinitely 
great.2 According to these ideas it is no longer true under 
all circumstances that a foot is a foot and a pound is a pound. 
The weight, the mass and the size of an object all depend 
upon its velocity. Relativity now shows us that all motion 
is relative. So also are space, time, mass and size. There 
is no such thing as absolute space. If you took everything 
out of space, it would have no meaning. 

To explain how these things could be true, Einstein ad- 
vanced his celebrated theory of relativity, first as a partial 
statement, now known as “the special or restricted theory 
of relativity” and later in a more comprehensive statement, 
called “the general theory of relativity.” Einstein’s first 
revolutionary proposal, contained in a paper of four or five 
pages, related to bodies at rest or in uniform motion, and 
not to accelerated bodies. Hence it is called the “restricted 
theory,’ and may be stated thus: “All unaccelerated frames 
-of reference are equivalent for the statement of the general 
laws of physics.” That is, the statement of the laws of 
nature is the same for all observers who are at rest or in 
uniform motion. These laws of nature are observed relations 
between the object and the observer. That is, the statement 
of the laws of nature need not be modified if the observer 
and the iron bar are both at rest, or both moving with uni- 

+The statements we have made about relativity so far, are common 
ideas of physics, consistent with Newtonian conceptions. Now we 
come to some novel ideas which would surprise Newton. 

*“QOutline of Science,” Vol. IV, pp. 1036-1039. Everything is rela- 
tive to something else. As Mark Twain said of the street in 
Damascus “which is called straight,” it is so because, while it is not 


as straight as a rainbow, it is straighter than a corkscrew. Thus all 
our knowledge is relative and not absolute. 


AA NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


form speed, but if either is accelerated, then modifications 
must be introduced. 

Not satisfied with a theory that was restricted to unac- 
celerated frames of reference, Einstein continued his inves- 
tigations till he announced the general theory of relativity 
which may be stated in twelve words, but its comprehension 
will not be “accelerated” without mathematical training. 
“All Gaussian systems are equivalent for the statement of 
general physical laws.”? 

According to this theory of Einstein’s space and time are 
no longer absolute and independent, but we are in fact living 
in a world of four.dimensions. You can locate an event, or 
your iron bar, from right to left, up and down, forward and 
back, and, sooner or later, in time. Really to locate it we 
must consider its position in space, with regard to some 
frame of reference, and also the instant when it was there. 
That is, it needs four quantities to locate it, three in space 
and one in time. We live in a conventional world which is 
largely the creation of our minds. The real world is “a four 
dimensional space-time continuum.” 

According to Einstein, our ordinary conceptions of space 
which are embodied in Euclid’s geometry are valid only 
where no “gravitational field” exists. But Einstein shows 
that’ gravitational fields arise in the presence of matter as 
though matter twisted or bent space, like a weight pressing 
down the surface of a rubber balloon, making corrections 
necessary in the mathematics of Euclid, and the physics of 
Galileo and Newton. 


* Einstein uses the system of curved coordinates proposed by the 
mathematician Gauss, not the three Straight lines we have been 
accustomed to. If a body is left free Euclid said it would stand still; 
Newton said it would move in a straight line; Einstein says it will 
move in a curve through space-time. Einstein found a world of rela- 
tions, but under it an absolute world of which physical phenomena 
are the manifestations. The progress of science is toward the demate- 
rialization of matter. Einstein shows that there is something in the 
nature of an ultimate entity in the universe of which matter is one 
manifestation. As Eddington says, “All through the physical world 
runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our 
consciousness.” “Space, Time and Gravitation,” p. 200. 


THE NEW SCIENCE 45 


Einstein now informs us that gravitation is not a property 
of matter but of space, that it is not a force as Newton sup- 
posed, but is due to a warp in space; that the more matter is 
present the more space is curved; that space is finite but 
unbounded ;? that mass is latent energy, and that mass and 
energy are convertible and interchangeable. Some astrono- 
mers now believe that the light of the stars and the sun 
comes from the actual annihilation of matter, the material 
of these bodies being transformed into radiant energy. 

Einstein offered three tests of his theory of relativity. 
He predicted that the orbits of the planets would deviate 
from Newton’s law, that light would be deviated in a gravi- 
tational field, or bent as it passed near a mass like the sun, 
and that under certain conditions spectral lines would be 
shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. All three pre- 
dictions have been confirmed. The irregularity in the motion 
of the planet Mercury is accounted for by Einstein’s theory. 
Astronomers who have observed eclipses in Brazil, Africa 
and Australia confirmed his second prediction, while Dr. C. 
E. St. John confirmed the third at the Mount Wilson 
Observatory. 

Among the three great generalizations of modern science 
by Newton, Darwin and Einstein, the last is the widest yet 
attempted. Some count it “the profoundest single achieve- 
ment of the human mind.” Relativity unifies the laws of 
nature. It surpasses in boldness all previous theories. It 
introduces a revolution in science comparable to that of the 
Copernican system of the universe. Greek philosophy was 
subjective; Victorian science was objective; Einstein is 
showing us how to unite the two. It will take many years 
to appreciate the full significance of relativity, to apply it 
and orient ourselves to it. 

Lord Haldane in his “Reign of Relativity” points out 
some of the first implications of the theory. The first lesson 
we may learn is that of kumility. We know in part and all 
our knowledge is relative to our own limited standpoint. 


* Haas, “The New Physics,” p. 152. Slosson, “Easy Lessons in 
Einstein,” p. 6. 


46 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Dogmatism, boasting, pride should have no part in our lives. 
As Huxley pointed out, we should sit down before every 
fact, and indeed before all life in the teachable spirit of the 
little child. What room is there for pride? How much do 
we know? What can we prove? 

Again, relativity should teach us tolerance. Others have 
their viewpoint; they see another side of the shield. Their 
partial truths may supplement ours. Truth in terms of one 
order is not a sufficient guide in another. Science cannot be 
dogmatic about religion nor religion about science. Our 
little knowledge is a dangerous thing. We ever tend to 
bisect life into a dualism between subject and object, matter 
and mind, time and space, the true and the false, good and 
evil, right and wrong in absolute antithesis. Our dogmatic 
ultimatums always propose an exclusive either-or. For illus- 
tration, who was right and who was wrong regarding the 
motion of the earth at the trial of Galileo? Galileo said 
the earth moves and the sun is fixed; the Inquisition said 
the earth is fixed and the sun moves; Newton, with an abso- 
lute theory of space, said both the sun and the earth move. 
Einstein shows that any one of the statements is equally 
true according as you define rest and motion relative to the 
observer. At the time of the trial Galileo’s statement of the 
facts was the more helpful, but it was not absolute truth. 
So in the whole controversy between science and religion, 
between nations and parties, between men who have out- 
lawed, excommunicated, and condemned one another 
throughout history, it is seldom that any individual or party 
is wholly right and the other wholly wrong. If I know only 
in part, and therefore imperfectly, and my opponent knows 
some other part, how do I know that my part is wholly true 
and his wholly false? The narrower the field of vision the 
more we are tempted to dogmatism, but relativity should 
teach us all tolerance. 

Which was right in the Civil War, the North or the South; 
the principle of the Union or of state’s rights? One was 
right prophetically, the other historically. The issue was 


*See A. N. Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World,” p. 263. 


THE NEW SCIENCE AY 


relative to the geographical location, the interests and view- 
point of the participants. Who was right in the World 
War? Always “our side,” of course. Who is right, the 
conservative or the liberal? The conservative is only an old 
liberal and the liberal a young conservative. Who is right, 
the fundamentalist or the modernist ; he who would conserve 
eternal truth from the past, or he who would seek new truth 
in the future; he who would preserve the heritage of yester- 
day, or he who would apply it to changed conditions today ? 
Probably in part both are right and both wrong. Tolerance 
would teach them the understanding of sympathy and coop- 
eration against a common foe instead of seeking to destroy 
one another. As Oliver Cromwell said, “My brethren, by 
the bowels of Christ I beseech you, bethink you that you 
may be mistaken.” 


Conclusion 


Finally, if science and religion are two parallel activities 
of the developing human spirit, if both have emerged from 
the crudest beginnings out of ignorance and superstition, if 
both have limitations, science as largely descriptive and 
religion as chiefly subjective, if both rest upon undemon- 
strable premises and must proceed upon a basis of hypothesis 
or faith, is it not evident that, while there may be conflict 
upon the lower levels, there may be mutual understanding 
and cooperation as both emerge from the dogmatic period. 
Science and religion need each other. If divorced, a mate- 
rialistic science and an unscientific, reactionary religion are 
positive menaces. Acting together, a humanized science and 
a scientific, spiritual religion can lead mankind to the enrich- 
ment, organization and integration of life, in a developing, 
cooperative process. 

There is inevitable conflict between dogmatic religion and 
rationalistic science, between an unscientific belief and an 
unbelieving science. But rightly understood, between true 
science and vital religion there need be no conflict. We do 
not believe that science and religion are two alternative and 
mutually exclusive views of the world, nor that they can be 


48 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


so delimited and widely separated that they never meet and 
therefore never conflict. They do meet and overlap. Further, 
at some points they apparently conflict. This need not be a 
disaster. Some of the greatest discoveries in science have 
been the direct result of failure. Columbus failed to reach 
India and was interrupted by the discovery of America. The 
failure of the Ptolemaic led to the Copernican system. 
Perkin’s failure to find quinine revealed the hidden wealth 
of coal-tar products. The failure of Lord Rayleigh and Sir 
William Ramsey to obtain the same weight of their respec~- 
tive nitrogen products led to the discovery of argon and a 
new conception of chemical theory. The failure to find 
radium obeying our “laws” of the “fixed” elements revo- 
lutionized our whole conception of matter. If, as Coleridge 
said, “all truth is a species of revelation,’ we need not fear 
apparent contradictions. 

Science instead of being an enemy may become the ally 
of religion. Professor Shailer Mathews points out in the 
“Contributions of Science to Religion” that the new concep- 
tion of matter has ended the old materialism. Astronomy is 
forcing us to believe that the ultimate activity of the universe 
is infinite. Everywhere this activity works under the form 
of laws. Science everywhere assumes and discloses ration- 
ality which implies mind. “There must be intelligence in an 
intelligent universe.” Science steadily shows us processes 
and tendencies. As Professor Conklin of Princeton says, 
“There is a universe of ends as well as of means, of teleology 
as well as of mechanism.” Nature includes human person- 
ality and “there is nothing from which human personality 
could be derived unless it be that activity which constitutes 
ultimate existence.” There must be that in the environment 
which can evoke personality. “It is impossible to think that 
personality could evolve from the exclusively impersonal.” 
As each animal must correspond with its environment in 
order to live, the spiritual life of man must correspond with 
its source, with the spiritual environment which we believe 
to be God. Thus science will increasingly give richer con- 


THE NEW SCIENCE 49 


tent to our conception of God, of man and of nature.’ Prof. 
Elwood says, ‘““A new hope has come into the world—that 
science may unite with religion in the work of redeeming 
mankind.” 

Dr. Millikan, the distinguished physicist, as an earnest 
Christian states what he believes to be the true relation 
between science and religion. He maintains that the conflict 
is only between two different species of ignorance, “there is 
actually no conflict whatever between science and religion 
when each is correctly understood.” Some men in both 
camps are still dwelling in the jungle, living by instinct and 
impulse, by inherited loves and hates instead of reason, 
“Medical science certainly is full of jungle dwellers, as is 
shown by the existence of such a scientific anomaly as sects 
in medicine.” There are many in the camp of religion who 
would pass laws that certain subjects should not even be 
studied, when they have never themselves dared to study the 
scientific subjects concerned. Dr. Millikan gives a long list 
of devout scientists who were men of deep religious faith 
from the great Newton to Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, Pasteur 
and a large number of living scientists. Many of them 
would say with Lord Kelvin, “If you think strongly enough 
you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is 
the foundation of all religion. You will find it not antagon- 
istic but helpful to religion.”* Dr. Millikan’s book closes 
with a significant statement signed by forty-five distinguished 
scientists, public men of affairs and religious leaders, as 
follows: 


“A Joint Statement Upon the Relations of Science 
and Religion 
By a Group of Scientists, Religious Leaders, and 
Men of Affairs 


“We, the undersigned, deeply regret that in recent con- 
troversies there has been a tendency to present science and 


*See “Contributions of Science to Religion,” pp. 351-422. 

?“Science and Life,” p. 45. His biographer says of Kelvin, “It 
pained him to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by young men 
who had never known the deeper side of existence.” 


50 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


religion as irreconcilable and antagonistic domains of thought, 
for in fact they meet distinct human needs, and in the round- 
ing out of human life they supplement rather than displace 
or oppose each other. 

“The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice 
or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the 
laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important 
task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the con- 
sciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. Each 
of these two activities represents a deep and vital function 
of the soul of man, and both are necessary for the life, the 
progress, and the happiness of the human race. 

“Tt is a sublime conception of God which is furnished by 
science, and one wholly consonant with the highest ideals of 
religion, when it represents him as revealing himself through 
countless ages in the development of the earth as an abode 
for man and in the age-long inbreathing of life into its con- 
stituent matter, culminating in man with his spiritual nature 
and all his God-like powers.” 


1Signed by Religious Leaders: Bishop William Lawrence, Bishop 
William Thomas Manning, Bishop Joseph H. Johnson, Dr. Henry 
Van Dyke, Dr. James I. Vance, Dr. John D. Davis, President James 
Gore King McClure, President Clarence A. Barbour, President Ernest 
D. Burton, President William Louis Poteat, President Henry 
Churchill King, Dr. Robert E. Brown, Bishop Francis John McCon- 
nell, Dr. Merle N. Smith, Dr. Peter Ainslie, Dr. Herbert L. Willett. 
Scientists: Charles D. Walcott, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Edwin Grant’ 
Conklin, James Rowland Angell, John Merle Coulter, Michael I. 
Pupin, William James Mayo, George David Birkhoff, Arthur A. 
Noyes, William Wallace Campbell, John J. Carthy, Robert A. Milli- 
kan, William Henry Welch, John C. Merriam, Gano Dunn. Men of 
Affairs: Herbert Hoover, James John Davis, Elihu Root, David F. 
Houston, Frank O. Lowden, John Sharpe Williams, Rear Admiral 
William §S. Sims, Harry Bates Thayer, Julius Kruttschnitt, Frank 
Vanderlip, Henry S. Pritchett, William Allen White, Victor F. 
Lawson, John G. Shedd. 


Crapter II 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 


Psychology as a science is an attempt to study human 
personality by scientific procedure. Before the development 
of experimental methods psychology was more largely specu- 
lative. Psychological experiments were at first conducted in 
the laboratory where reactions could be tested. At present 
the emphasis is upon the study of human personality in the 
situations of actual life. There are obvious difficulties in 
securing scientific conditions in real life and many claim that 
psychology can only be a pseudo-science. Most psychologists 
feel, however, that, while it is not yet an exact science such as 
physics or chemistry, where the elements of the experiment 
may be entirely controlled, yet reasonably accurate, objective 
and measurable results may be obtained. Many psychological 
measurements are more accurate and reliable than are those 
involved in medical science. 

In order to deal with these objective and measurable fac- 
tors a number of psychologists have insisted that we must 
shift the emphasis from a study of the mind, which requires 
introspection, necessarily subjective and inexact, to an exami- 
nation of behavior. They claim that by subjecting human 
beings to varied and controlled environmental conditions and 
discovering the resulting responses or behavior which the 
stimuli of these situations secure, it will be possible scientifi- 
cally to determine many things regarding human behavior. 
Ordinarily the term “behaviorist” is applied to one school of 
psychologists headed by John B. Watson. As a matter of 
fact, however, other psychologists also, who insist that our 
only certain knowledge of human beings is confined to their 
overt acts, are in their emphasis “behaviorists.”” The “‘intro- 
spectionists,” on the other, hand, emphasize the study of the 
mind through introspective processes. Behaviorists assume 
that there is no sharply defined line between the behavior of 
higher animals and man. Consequently Thorndike and others 

51 


§2 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


have given large attention also to the study of animal psy- 
chology. To the behaviorist, personality is a hierarchy of 
“S-R bonds,” or stimulus-response reactions. That is, to 
the stimuli of environment responses have been made which 
have built up in the nervous system bonds which connect the 
responses to the stimulii. The nervous system is thus con- 
structed like an automatic telephone exchange system, where 
a certain stimulus, like the ringing of a bell, connects by 
bonds, like telephone wires with central exchanges, a certain 
stimulus with a certain response. These are joined together 
in behavior series or “patterns,’ so that a given stimulus 
will set off a series of connected responses. John B. Watson 
finds no place for consciousness or purpose in his system. 
The actions of animals or men are simply these series of 
mechanical responses which have been developed. Once a 
stimulus sets a series off, automatically it goes on to 
completion. 

Others take the objective behavioristic approach of 
“dynamic psychology.” They hold that it is not primarily 
the environment, but the purpose, drive or “mind-set” of the 
individual which determines the readiness of the “S-R 
bonds,” and what the behavior series will be. They recog- 
nize both purpose and consciousness, but agree in their 
skepticism of any scientific results obtained from the study 
of personality except through the study of behavior. 

Another group of psychologists, including Freud, Ranck, 
Jung and Adler, belong to the psychoanalytic school. These 
psychologists say that you cannot understand the behavior 
' or overt acts of an individual unless you know the drives that 
are behind these acts, and the past experience of the indi- 
vidual in the repression of and conflict between his strong 
native desires. Freud has placed his chief emphasis upon 
sex as being the most pervasive and dominant force in the 
shaping of personality. Ranck holds that the struggle from 
dependence to independence is even more basic. Others place 
larger emphasis upon the ego or self-striving elements in 
human nature. | 

If these strong native drives do not find normal expression 
in the development of the individual, or if there are conflicts 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 53 


between them which are not resolved, then abnormal be- 
havior develops. If it cannot secure it in normal ways, 
human nature will find a way of securing what it wants and 
avoiding what is undesirable by extra-normal expression. 
“Complexes” are behavior patterns, or habits, which have 
been built up, in the same way as other habits, but where 
there was strong emotion in repression or conflict between 
native drives involving sex, dependence and ego-expression. 
These psychologists say that unless you know something of 
these emotional habits which an individual brings to a situa- 
tion and which influence his conduct, you will not have full 
knowledge of his responses or be able to understand his 
behavior. They assert that early experience is most potent 
in shaping the individual, because it is in the family circle 
and in relation to parents that the first strong impressions 
are made. Consequently they would look back to early child- 
hood for the beginnings of the emotional habits which 
influence behavior in adult life. 

If a person is over-sensitive, has a bad temper, is prudish 
about sex, or tries unduly to lord it over others, they would 
maintain that such habits began in early childhood relation- 
ships and have become emotionally set as a part of the per- 
sonality, so that responses of this sort have become automatic 
and are irrational. Psychoanalysis is a technic for substi- 
tuting rational insight for these irrational, blind and often 
self-defeating emotional habits. 

The so-called Gestalt psychology, coming chiefly from the 
work of Kohler and Koffka in Germany, has brought two 
new emphases. Kohler in his study of animals gives extended 
evidence to prove that the higher animals show not the chance 
development of behavior through crude trial and error at- 
tempts, but that apes and other animals give evidence of the 
recognition of ends and the conscious employment of means 
to reach them. This evidence Kohler would oppose to the 
insistence of many behaviorists that animal reactions are 
non-purposive and have grown up merely through trial and 
error attempts to meet environment. 

The Gestalt group also has conducted experiments which 
they claim show that the response to a stimulus is a response 


54 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


to a total situation rather than being subject to analysis into 
more minute stimulus-response bonds. Something specific 
stands out but only in relation to the whole setting as a 
background. They use the term “configuration” to describe 
this total situation. The Gestalt psychology, therefore, sup- 
plements the analysis of other schools with an emphasis 
upon synthesis in human behavior. 

We may find that these schools of psychology, in their 
natural and necessary concentration upon some special aspect 
of human behavior, supplement one another in their contri- 
butions to our fuller understanding of human nature and 
conduct. We have already noted that the name “behavior- 
ism” has come in popular thought to be associated with the 
more extreme of that group of psychologists who are giving 
their attention objectively to the study of behavior. Since 
this is the school concerning which there is most feeling 
among religious leaders, we will give more detailed attention 
to it. Without assuming any previous study of modern 
psychology on the reader’s part, we shall, as far as possible, 
avoid technical terms. Some of the more technical material 
will be found in the footnotes. 

We must at the outset, however, clearly distinguish be- 
tween a system and its personal representatives, between 
behaviorism and certain behaviorists. The objective study 
of human and animal behavior was as necessary, as fruitful, 
as inevitable as the experimental and objective method in 
every other science. As a method of study behaviorism has 
doubtless come to stay. But all individual behaviorists have 
not. It may be almost as fatal if Christians line up against 
“behaviorism” as a method, as it was for the Roman Church 
when it took its stand against the Copernican astronomy, 
and for fundamentalist Protestants when they rejected the 
evidence for evolution. The sun moves and the Inquisition 
could not stop it; nature evolves whether we like it or not; 
and the fruitful study of behavior will prove one of the great 
advances of modern science no matter what opposition 
develops. That does not blind us to some of the natural 
extremes of the early exponents of an adolescent science. 

Behaviorism is probably in the first of the three tradi- 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 55 


tional stages, through which most new movements pass, of 
thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It is doubtless destined 
to play a large part in the synthesis of the study of human 
behavior. 

The two schools of introspectionists and behaviorists natu- 
rally define psychology quite differently. To the first it is 
the study of the mind; to the second a study of bodily 
behavior.t. The latter group would discard altogether con- 
cepts of “mind,” “will,’ “perception,” “attention,” and all 
other words denoting anything “subjective.” They would 
confine psychology to the scientific study of behavior, or 
activities of the human being, while other psychologists 
would include a study of both consciousness and behavior. 

Following the work of Thorndike and others, Watson’s 
studies in animal behavior suggested to him that psychology 
could be immensely simplified and made an exact science if 
man were regarded as merely a higher animal and his out- 


James would say, “Psychology is the description and explanation 
of the states of consciousness as such.” ‘Thorndike says, “Behavior, 
then, is not contrasted with, but inclusive of conscious life.” 

With the dawn of thought in the Greek mind the beginnings of 
psychology arose out of the practical necessities of life and finally 
developed a “theory of the soul.” Psychology as a science may be 
said to date from Aristotle, in the fourth century B. C. For the next 
twenty centuries rational psychology continued as an armchair specu- 
lation upon the origin, nature and destiny of the soul. The long period 
of inertia ended with Francis Bacon (1620). He turned the attention 
of men to experience and nature. John Locke (1690) and the English 
associationists, Hume and Hartley, despairing of an answer to ulti- 
mate metaphysical questions, began to investigate the problems of 
consciousness based upon a study of the senses alone. During the 
last century psychology has undergone another revolution. No longer 
a mere department of general philosophy, it has gradually become a 
specialized and empirical science. Weber, Fechner and Wundt in 
Germany turned from the speculation of the easy chair to the experi- 
mental research of the laboratory. William James (1842-1910) may 
be regarded as the father and founder of scientific and social psychol- 
ogy in America. The work of G. Stanley Hall, of Lester F. Ward 
and James Mark Baldwin also laid foundations for the new psy- 
chology. As men analyzed their experience they found it could be 
studied from either of two viewpoints, the content of experience, or 
the act of experiencing. This difference of emphasis and of object 
early led to the separation of two schools in psychology under the 
names of structuralism and functionalism. It led later to the division 
between introspectionists and behaviorists, 


56 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


ward behavior as purely the mechanical reaction to stimulus 
received from the environment. For illustration, if one cross 
his right knee over the other and then sharply tap the tendon 
below the right knee-cap, the right foot will instantly jerk 
forward. This is a simple reflex action, or response to a 
stimulus from without. Watson suggests that all life is 
simply a series of reactions, of behavior simple or complex, 
in response to stimuli or situations. 

The consistent “behaviorist” seeks simplicity and objec- 
tivity. He therefore projects the theory that every action 
is simply a response to some stimulus from without, that 
nothing exists in the universe but matter and force, that the 
body and brain with the entire universe is purely a mechan- 
ism. By that theory he hopes to reduce psychology to an 
exact science of pure determinism, calculable, predictable, 
dependable. He hopes to do away with all awkward impon- 
derable and incalculable factors of free will or purpose, of 
consciousness or mind, of philosophy or religion, and to make 
psychology a simple and exact science like physics or chem- 
istry. He starts with this theory as a method of study and 
then tries to account on this basis for the whole of life so far 
as psychology is concerned. 

Every action of animal or man would then be a mechanical 
reflex response to a stimulus. Mind would be simply the 
way the body behaves; physical and chemical reactions would 
be the only reactions. Without attempting to give a continu- 
ous quotation we shall let Dr. Watson state his position in 
his own words, from his “Behavior: An Introduction to 
Comparative Psychology.” 


Behaviorism seeks an accurate knowledge of adjustments and 
the stimuli calling them forth, in order to learn general and 
particular methods by which behavior may be controlled. Psy- 
chology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, 
experimental branch of natural science, which needs introspec- 
tion as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics. The 
position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior 
of animals must be considered on the same plane. It can dispense 
with consciousness in a psychological sense. 


In his last book, “Behaviorism,” two elements are notice- 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 57 


able throughout. There is, on the one hand, objective evi- 
dence from his scientific, inductive study of human behavior. 
Side by side with this there is an attack upon all psychology 
which lies outside the narrow sphere of his own scientific 
school, and an exposition of his own interpretation of per- 
sonality and of life which includes an attack upon all philoso- 
phy and all religion. These two elements will be seen in ~ 
the following quotations: 


Before beginning our study of “behaviorism” it will be worth 
our while to take a few minutes to look at the conventional 
school of psychology that flourished before the advent of beha- 
viorism in 1912—and that still flourishes, All schools of psy- 
chology except that of behaviorism claim that “consciousness” 
1s the subject matter of psychology. Behaviorism, on the con- 
trary, holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the 
behavior or activities of the human being. Behaviorism claims 
that “consciousness” is neither a definable nor a usable concept; 
that it is merely another word for the “soul” of more ancient 
times. 

No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural 
started. It probably had its origin in the general laziness of 
mankind. Medicine men have always flourished. Behavior has 
always been easily controlled by fear stimuli. If the fear element 
were dropped out of any religion, that religion could not long 
survive. This fear element was variously introduced as the 
“devil,” “evil,’ “sin” and the like. One example of such a 
concept is that there is a fearsome God and that every individual 
has a soul which is separate and distinct from the body. This 
dogma has been present in human psychology from earliest 
antiquity. No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in 
a test tube. 

In 1912 the behaviorists reached the conclusion that they could 
no longer be content to work with intangibles and unapproach- 
ables. They decided either to give up psychology or else to make 
it a natural science, They dropped from their scientific vocabu- 
lary all subjective terms such as sensation, perceptions, image, 
desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were 
subjectively defined. We can observe behavior—what the organ- 
ism does or says. Saying ts doing—that is, behaving. Speaking 
overtly or to ourselves (thinking) is just as objective a type of 
behavior as baseball. Can I describe this bit of behavior I see 
in terms of “stimulus and response’? By response we mean 
that system of organized activity that we see emphasized any- 
where in any kind of animal. Almost from infancy society 
begins to prescribe behavior. 


58 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


At birth only two stimuli will call out fear, a loud sound, and 
loss of support. At the instant you show a child an animal and 
just as he begins to reach for it, strike a steel bar behind his 
head. Repeat the experiment three or four times. The animal 
now calls out the same response as the steel bar, namely a fear 
response. We call this, in behavioristic psychology, the condt- 
tioned emotional response—a form of conditioned reflex. We 
can set up conditioned responses in animals or children. What 
methods shall we use systematically to condition the adult? With 
what system of changing stimuli shall we surround him? 

I am going to ask you to accept the behavioristic platform at 
least for this series of lectures. Behaviorism takes the whole 
field of human adjustments as its own. The behaviorist wants 
to control man’s reactions, to be able to predict and to control 
human activity. To do this he must gather scientific data by 
experimental methods. Behavioristic psychology has as its goal 
to be able, given the stimulus, to predict the response—or, seeing 
the reaction take place to state what the stimulus is that has 
called out the reaction.+ 


At the close of his first chapter Dr. Watson states that 
introspective psychology, functional psychology and_ all 
philosophy are “gradually disappearing, and becoming the 
history of science.” Ethics is giving place to experimental 
ethics based entirely upon behavioristic methods. Sociology 
is merging into behavioristic social psychology and into eco- 
nomics. Religion is “being replaced among the educated by 
experimental ethics.” Psychoanalysis, “based largely upon 
religion, introspective psychology and voodooism, is being 
replaced slowly by behavioristic studies.” After several 
chapters on the physiology of the human body, Dr. Watson 
says in his chapters on “Are there any human instincts?” 


There are then for us no instincts. Everything we have been 
in the habit of calling an “instinct” today is a result largely of 
training—belongs to man’s learned behavior. There is no such 
thing as an inheritance of capacity, talent, temperament, mental 
constitution and characteristics, From now on man for us is a 
whole animal. When he reacts he reacts with each and every 
part of his body. 

There are heritable differences in form, in structure. The 
mere presence of these structures tell us not one thing about 


* “Behaviorism,” pp. 3-18. The quotations are not continuous and 


for obvious typographical reasons the breaks between them are not 
indicated. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 59 


function. The behaviorist recognizes no such thing as mental 
traits, dispositions or tendencies. All by hypothesis had equal 
chances at birth. Grant variations in structure at birth and 
rapid habit formation from birth. Every human being is put 
together differently, Differences in early training make man 
still more different. Give me a dozen healthy infants and I'll 
guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become 
any type of specialist I might select. We have no sure evidence 
of inferiority in the Negro race. The truth is society does not 
like to face facts. Man is built of certain materials put together 
in certain complex ways, and as a corollary of the way he is 
put together and of the material out of which he is made—he 
must act (until learning has reshaped him) as he does act. 


Regarding the Emotions he says: 


There are three different forms of response that can be called 
out at birth by three sets of stimuli. I call these responses 
“fear,” “rage,” and “love.” They form the nucleus out of which 
all future emotional reactions arise. These unconditioned 
stimuli with their relatively simple unconditioned responses are 
our starting points in building up those complicated conditioned 
habit patterns we later call our emotions. Our emotional life 
grows and develops like our other sets of habits. 

You have already grasped the notion that the behaviorist is a 
strict determinist—the child or adult has to do what he does do. 
The only way he can be made to act differently is first to untrain 
him and then to retrain him. It is our own fault, then, that 
individuals go ‘“‘wrong.” Man’s emotional life is built up bit 
by bit by the wear and tear of environment upon him, Hitherto 
the process has been hit or miss. Now we can build up emotional 
reactions in an orderly way. 


On Manual Habits he says: 


The higher we go in the animal series, the more dependent 
the organism is upon learned behavior. Greater development 
in three systems of habit forever differentiates man: (1) The 
number, delicacy and accuracy of visceral or emotional habits, 
(2) the number, complexity, and fineness of his laryngeal or 
verbal habits, (3) the number and fineness of his manual habits. 

The baby learns to manipulate objects and even its own bodily 
parts literally by the sweat of its brow. With early basal habits 
of reaching and manipulation established, the infant begins his 
mastery of the world. It seems to be a human failing to stop 
improving at the lowest economic level that enables an individual 
to get along in his group. People are lazy. James was right 
when he said that most people do not learn after thirty, but there 


60 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


is no reason for it except that most people after thirty have 
explored the mysteries of sex and are getting food and water. 

The behaviorist never uses the term “Memory.” Instead of 
speaking of memory, the behaviorist speaks of the retention of 
a given habit in terms of how much skill has been retained and 
how much has been lost in the period of no practice. 


Regarding talking and thinking Watson says: 


Habits exercised implicitly behind the closed doors of the lips 
we call thinking. Man both talks and thinks with his whole body. 
The human has a verbal substitute within himself theoretically 
for every object in the world. Thereafter he carries the world 
around with him by means of this organization. Thought is in 
short nothing but talking to ourselves. The evidence for this 
view is admittedly largely theoretical. “Meaning” is just a way 
of saying that out of all the ways the individual has of reacting 
to an object, at any one time he reacts in only one. 

“Memory” is really the functioning of the verbal part of a 
total habit. “Thinking” is largely subvocal talking—provided 
we hasten to explain that it can occur without words. 


In his final chapter on Personality he says: 


Our personality is but the out-growth of the habits we form. 
Man is an assembled organic machine ready to run. I define 
personality as the sum of activities that can be discovered by 
actual observation of behavior. The situation we are in domi- 
nates us always and releases one or another of these all-powerful 
habit systems. In general, we are what the situation calls for. 
Attention is merely the complete dominance of any one habit 
system, be that a verbal system, a manual habit system or a 
visceral one. The only way thoroughly to change personality 
is to remake the individual by changing his environment in such 
a way that new habits have to form. 


He thus closes his work on Behaviorism: 


J am not asking for “free love.’ I am trying to dangle a 
stimulus in front of you, a verbal stimulus which, if acted upon, 
will gradually change this universe. For the universe will 
change if you bring up your children, not in the freedom of the 
libertine, but in behavioristic freedom—a freedom which we 
cannot even picture in words, so little do we know of it. Will 
not these children in turn, with their better ways of living and 
thinking, replace us as society and in turn bring up their children 


in a still more ideal way, until the world finally becomes a place 
fit for human habitation? 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 61 


The word behaviorism is used in two quite different senses 
and consequently leads to great confusion. Jé¢ may mean 
either a system of psychology based on an objective method 
of study, or a metaphysical theory of existence. As a method 
of study of animal and human behavior there can be no 
scientific objection to it. Though not the only method, it is 
probably the most exact, fruitful and promising of all 
methods of investigation. But as a mechanistic dogma or 
metaphysical theory, as an unproven assumption of thorough- 
going materialism, it is an unscientific and unwarranted inva- 
sion into fields that lie quite beyond its province. It is 
entirely legitimate to take a purely mechanical hypothesis 
and see if all life can be accounted for upon this basis, but 
behaviorism cannot, upon the basis of its confessedly meager 
results in one restricted sphere, dogmatically affirm a uni- 
versal philosophy of life. Behaviorism as a method of study 
is compatible with any theory of philosophy or religion. A 
man may be a behaviorist in method and in philosophy hold 
either a mechanistic or spiritual interpretation of life. Or he 
may be an introspectionist, and be either a mechanist like 
Titchener or an animist, believing in the soul, like McDougall. 


Benefits of Behaviorism as a Method 


With behaviorism as one method of study we are in full 
sympathy. Let us seek briefly to appraise some of its results. 
Watson admits that it is as yet little more than a promise 
of experimentation; nevertheless its day has been brief but 
brilliant. In the line of the great advances in psychology 
marked by such names as Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Darwin, 
Wundt, James and Freud, we may rank psychoanalysis and 
behaviorism as the two most important developments in psy- 
chology during our generation. Both need criticism, sifting 
and supplementing, but both have come to stay, and both have 
already made large contributions to life. 

We are not greatly alarmed over the prospect of perma- 
nent loss from the negative and destructive tendencies of 
extreme behaviorism. Individuals will unfortunately be 
misled, but in the end the backward swing of the pendulum 
may move the hands of the clock as fast as the forward 


62 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


swing. Hume’s destructive philosophy led to Kant’s awak- 
ening. Kant’s negative work shattered many idols but 
drove men to seek more solid foundations. So even the 
temporary extremes of behaviorism in the first flush of its 
new enthusiasm will only drive us to a more practical and 
pragmatic emphasis on behavior, which is always healthy. 

Behaviorism has already made permanent contributions to 
psychology in its simplicity, accuracy and objectivity. In 
this science these were deeply needed. As a method of study 
behaviorism was long overdue in psychology. Other sciences 
had previously entered the field of objective experimentation, 
divorced from the influence of subjective factors.1 The work 
of Thorndike and others has made valuable contributions to 
our understanding of human life. Most people are vaguely 
aware of new methods by which children learn to read, 
write, figure and spell in half the time which was taken by 
former generations. Scores of changes in the methods and 
content of education are but the first fruits of a new ap- 
proach. The study of behavior responses reduces the misfits 
in school and college. Children and adults once classed as 
queer or hopeless, or impatiently blamed upon heredity, are 
now being re-conditioned to lives of successful and happy 
adjustment. As a method it will doubtless make many 
contributions to education. But as the only method, or as 
a philosophy of life, it would probably be fatal to many of 
the higher interests. 

Behaviorism has done some of its best work on instincts. 
Watson’s study of babies has been painstaking and fruitful. 
His co-workers may yet show us how to drive away the curse 
of fear from childhood. Behaviorism has also taught us 
much in self-knowledge and self-mastery. There is already 
a wealth of psychological knowledge of human nature that 
would be of priceless value if known and applied by the 


*'The objective method of study began, not with Watson, but with 
Weber in Germany in 1825. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 63 


great mass of men and women. Most fruitful of all behavior- 
ism as a method has enriched, and will increasingly enrich, 
nearly all branches of science and of human life. Professor 
Dewey believes that our time has witnessed one of the most 
profound revolutions in philosophical thinking since Plato. 
He believes that we owe much of this reconstruction to the 
new psychology.* 

Advertising is now being built on the basis of the scientific 
appraisal of the behavior it arouses. Professor Harry Elmer 
Barnes shows the fruitful interrelation of “Psychology and 
History.” The effect of the behavioristic method is well 
shown in Allport’s objective studies of public opinion.? 

In “An American Idyl’” the work of Carlton Parker on 
behavioristic lines made clear how the I. W. W. and similar 
movements are the inevitable revolt of the working class 
where inhuman conditions prevail. In such studies we find 
no academic introversion, no hair-splitting discussion of the 
faculties of consciousness, but a practical application of psy- 
chology to human behavior. It is here that behaviorism has 
already made and is likely to make one of its most fruitful 
contributions. 

In the field of morality and religion we have nothing to 
fear and much to gain if behaviorism as a method of study is 
rigorously applied to the test of practical behavior. We 
have no fear of turning from an authoritarian to a rational 
ethics provided all the factors and relationships of life are 
taken into account. Professor George M. Stratton believes 
that “Psychology leaves religion living, with new means for 
its great work, and with fresh confidence in the naturalness 
and the need of the religious life.’’ 


1 Dewey says, “The Behavioristic movement transfers attention from 


vague generalities . . , to the specific processes. . . . It empha- 
sizes the importance of knowledge of the primary activities of human 
nature. . . . It radically simplifies the whole problem. . . . This 


provides the possibility of a positive method for analyzing social 
phenomena.” ‘Psychological Review,” 1917, pp. 270-271. 


7F. H. Allport, “Social Psychology,” pp. 308-396. 
*Journal of Religion, January, 1923. 


64 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Religion always faces the danger of escaping from the 
test of behavior. It may be conceived or practiced as pri- 
marily a matter of doctrine or correct opinion, as assent to 
formulas and shibboleths, as medieval superstition and 
obscurantism, as priestcraft and ceremonial, as prosaic literal- 
ism and hair-splitting legalism. In all such cases the be- 
haviorist may well remind us of the challenge, “Not every 
one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the 
Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father 
who is in heaven.” “Everyone therefore that heareth these 
words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise 
man, who built his house upon the rock.”* This is good 
behaviorism and it is true religion. Behaviorism will help 
both philosophy and religion to keep their feet on the earth, 
however much their vision may be in the clouds. : 

As a method of study we welcome the advent of behavior- 
ism. ,It should be not an enemy but an ally. It may help to 
recall us from barren and selfish religion conceived as credal 
assent, to vital Christianity as a way of life. As a fruitful 
method of study we ask not less behaviorism, but more. 
From barren introspectionism, from academic intellectualism 
and from sentimental emotionalism, we need the deliverance 
which the new objective psychology can give us. 


Behaviorism as a Philosophy 


Having noted with cordial approval some of the achieve- 
ments of behaviorism as a method of study, let us examine 
it as a philosophy of life. In this section we shall use the 
word “behaviorism” in a purely mechanistic sense. Psy- 
chology, whether as a study of behavior or of consciousness, 
while it may furnish valuable data in its own field, is obvi- 
ously not a philosophy or a total explanation of things. It 
cannot “attempt to give a reasoned conception of the universe 
and of man’s place in it.” Psychology is a science and has 
the limitations of a science. It was to get away from the 


1 Matt. 7:21, 24. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 65 


unprofitable and insoluble problems of introspectionism and 
intellectualism that certain psychologists proposed to concen- 
trate on the study of behavior. Yet almost immediately we 
find some of them plunging into unwarranted philosophical 
speculation. Speculation is, of course, always legitimate so 
long as it does not dogmatically profess to be science, when 
it has gone far beyond its facts and findings. 

Facing man and nature, the world within and without, the 
mind has ever been driven, when it passed beyond simple 
dualism, to interpret one in terms of the other. Either it 
moved from within outward and interpreted all life in terms 
of mind, as akin to man’s own nature; or it moved from 
without inward, and endeavored to interpret all life in terms 
of mechanism. One gives the unity of idealism, the other of 
materialism. Perhaps it was natural that in keeping with 
the spirit of the time, America should view the machine as 
the all-sufficient category to explain life. It might prove 
profitable to recall, however, that every machine we know 
implies mind. It is an instrument of purpose, a means to 
accomplish an end. It is conceived, made and operated by a 
purposive mind. We have to start even the so-called “self- 
starter.” The very perfection of such a mechanism, for 
instance, as the Ford car and plant implies a creative person- 
ality behind it. 

To behaviorism as a mechanistic philosophy we object on 
the following grounds: its unproven assumptions, its glaring 
omissions and its dogmatic denials. 

First, then, we object to its unproven assumptions. We 
are asked to assume, explicitly or implicitly, that the universe 
of matter and force is one vast mechanism and that there 
is no such thing as mind, thought, consciousness, purpose, 
motive or intelligent end, either in man or the universe. No 
mind ever thought, conceived, planned, created or evolved 
the whole or any part of this universe. But, as Professor 
Henderson of Harvard shows in “The Fitness of the Envi- 
ronment,’ there was not, literally, one chance in countless 
billions that the world, left to itself, would be fit to sustain 
life. Any one or two conditions altered would have prevented 


66 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


the orderly development of life on the planet. Yet we are 
asked to believe that this marvelous reciprocal fitness of the 
environment and the organism was not the work of intelli- 
gent purpose. We are asked to assume that the whole sweep 
of inorganic and organic evolution over millions of years 
shows no whit of intelligence or design. We are asked to 
assume that out of an inorganic world of unintelligent 
mechanism has evolved that which the behaviorist refuses to 
call mind, thought, and consciousness. We are asked to. 
believe that the writings of a Shakespeare, the symphonies 
of a Beethoven, the creations of a Phidias or a Raphael were 
the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms or the inevi- 
tably determined working of a material machine in which 
these men played no part in thought, feeling, or will—indeed 
the very use of such terms we are told is an “old-fashioned” 
habit of “superstitious persons.” We are further asked to 
assume that a purely mechanistic physiology will some day 
work out in terms of physics and chemistry a complete expla- 
nation of all processes whether physical or “mental.” 

Before recognizing as valid these and other sweeping 
assumptions, we are compelled to ask whether the meager 
findings of behaviorism have warranted them. Mr. Watson, 
in the first chapter of his book on “Behaviorism,” says, “I 
am going to ask you to put away all your old presuppositions 
and allay your natural antagonism and accept the behavior- 
istic platform at least for this series of lectures.” If one 
is asked to put away his “old presuppositions” merely to try 
a series of experiments in behaviorism as a method—yes, by 
all means; but if it is only to make a new set of sweeping 
assumptions of a mechanistic philosophy of life which Wat- 
son states in his first lecture, one might reply like Alice in 
Wonderland, ““There’s no use trying, one can’t believe impos- 
sible things.” The behaviorist might urge with the Queen, 
“Try again; draw a long breath and shut your eyes. ... 
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible 
things before breakfast.” 


* Quoted from J. B. Pratt’s “Matter and Spirit,” pp. 163, 164. See 
also pp. 112-118. Everett Dean Martin speaks of the mechanist’s 
theory as “a pure assumption dragged into science from the realm of 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 67 


Secondly, we object to behaviorism as a mechanistic 
philosophy on the ground of its glaring omissions. After 
arbitrarily delimiting its field to a portion of the facts, by 
an over-simplification it ignores or denies whole areas of life 
and experience, and these among the most important. Even 
in the restricted field of behavior, if it deals only with 
externals can it ever know the total act, when divorced from 
its motive, feeling, intent, purpose and end? Fortunately 
the behaviorist is not consistent here, for the whole conduct 
and interpretation of his experiments in outward behavior 
are only intelligible in the light of his own introspection or 
interpretive thought. He himself jumps when burned by a 
lighted match. Yet he knows pain in himself or rightly inter- 
prets it in others only from introspection or inward feeling. 

The behaviorist may attend a conference of philosophers 
or scientists discussing the implications of consciousness. He 
says, ‘“We have to throw the whole of philosophy over to 
start with. Philosophy has got to go; it is mere verbosity. 
Thinking is only an activity, chiefly of the chest and throat.’ 
But we cannot throw the whole of anything over to start 
with, if it is only to accept an unproven alternative 
philosophy.? 

The omissions of behaviorism and the incompleteness of 
its data as the basis for a mechanistic philosophy are found 
even in the lower ranges of animal behavior. The investi- 
gations of H. S. Jennings in the “Behavior of the Lower 
metaphysics. . . . We... marvel that men can hold it so tena- 
ciously in advance of greater knowledge than we possess. And even 
though we should succeed in pointing out logical and causal connec- 
tions among all things, would we not even then have only one possible 
view of the world—one among many?” “Psychology,” p. 36 

1 Private lecture by J. B. Watson, New York, 1925. 

2 As President King says, “It needs squarely to be said that there 
is a type of behaviorism that tends directly to a materialistic philoso- 
phy and that therefore cannot be harmonized with an ideal or religious 
interpretation of the world. . . . The whole of reality, the whole 
man, registers its inevitable protest against making the mathematico- 
mechanical view of the world the only view . . . against trying to 
make a part, not the whole of man, the standard; in other words, 
against ignoring the data which come through feeling and will, emo- 
tional, esthetic, ethical, and religious data, as well as those judgments 


of worth which underlie reason’s theoretical determinations.” H. C, 
King, “Seeing Life Whole,” p. 34. 


68 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Organism” shows a persistent method of spontaneous, varied 
behavior for which we have found as yet no satisfactory 
physical or chemical explanation. Driesch in his ‘Vitalism” 
shows the intelligent behavior of even lower organisms in 
the restitution of functions and the regeneration of organs 
after injury, which no mechanism that we know possesses. 
No machine can repair itself after an accident, as organisms 
do. J. Arthur Thomson shows in the “Outline of Science” 
that “no one has ever shown what the chemical and mechan- 
ical changes are by which thought and feeling are produced. 
Mechanism, as applied to mind, remains a mere hypothesis, 
an hypothesis, it may be added, to which philosophy gives 
no support.’ 

The gaps and omissions of behaviorism as a ground of 
mechanistic philosophy, are more marked when we rise to 
the higher inielligence of man. Not all man’s actions are 
simple repeated reflexes. Higher human action is purposive, 
it is varied, it chooses between alternatives and when balked 
in one, tries ever new ways of overcoming an obstacle or 
of solving a problem. Man’s behavior is often unpredictable. 

Professor Dewey maintains that we do intervene in the 
course of events, making possibilities actual. In his review 
of Whitehead’s ‘‘Science and the Modern World,” he says: 
“At the present time psychology is also aping the manners 
of physics, and with the consequence, as far as the influence 
of an influential school is concerned, of mechanizing educa- 
tion and social relations—in the precise sense in which 
Whitehead shows that mechanism has collapsed in physics 
itself. It is one of the tragedies of that professionalized 
specialism of science which Mr. Whitehead reveals and 
criticizes, that the human sciences are always adopting and 


*“Qutline of Science,” Vol. II, pp. 545-547. Kohler in his studies 
on “Intelligence in Apes” objects to “a dogmatic behaviorism which 
narrows its own world of realities, problems and theoretical possibili- 
ties as if knowing beforehand what kind of things can occur in an 
exact world.” He found that his chimpanzees solved their problems 
not by trial and error. The correct activity began abruptly from a 
stage of deliberation. The animal suddenly grasped the principle 
of a situation and showed a genuine type of intelligent behavior. 
“Psychologies of 1925,” pp. 135, 155. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 69 


using in the sphere of psychology, education and human 
relations, materials and methods which the more advanced 
physical sciences are abandoning. If the psychological 
school which claims to be the only genuine “Behaviorism” 
could read and digest the physical ideas which this book sets 
forth an immense amount of misleading and confusing intel- 
lectual activity would be saved the next generation.’ 

If all behavior were purely mechanical, uninfluenced by 
thought, motive or purpose, it would rob action of its mean- 
ing. What is the significance of the behavior of Socrates 
in drinking the hemlock apart from the thought-content of 
his philosophy, the value of his courage, the motive of his 
voluntary sacrifice, the end of the achievement of human 
freedom? We may agree with the behaviorist that man’s 
slightest movement is a process, more involved, more subtly 
and beautifully balanced and checked than that of the world’s 
most perfect invention. And yet is all “the glory that was 
Greece” to be cheapened to a series of complicated automatic 
reactions of nickel-in-the-slot machines? 

Let us note the greatest of all the omissions of mechanism 
in that which the behaviorist refuses to call thought. There 
sits a young man, buried in thought, named Einstein. In the 
realm of science and mathematics he finally works out what 
some hold to be “the profoundest single achievement of the 
human mind,” the hypothesis of relativity, which is revolu- 
tionizing human thought, forcing the revision of the geome- 
try of Euclid and of the physics of Newton. But Watson 
assures us that when Einstein was thinking, it was only 
“sub-vocal talking.” In the mechanism called Einstein 
instead of simple knee-jerks there was only a highly compli- 
cated series of purely physical, chemical or muscular changes 
taking place in his body. 

Professor Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins speaks of the “paras 
dox of the thinking behaviorist.”? According to Watson, 
when we think nothing happens from first to last but dis- 


“New Republic,” Feb. 17, 1926. 
# Philosophical Review, 1922, Vol. 13, p. 135. 


70 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


placements of muscle fibre. Professor Lovejoy points out 
that the behaviorist is a human organism whose thinking 
should be exhaustively described in terms of laryngeal 
muscles, but who in fact thinks of external objects, which 
thinking is not accounted for by his laryngeal muscles. The 
“owareness” of the investigator disproves his claim that no 
such phenomenon as awareness is found. Thus the behavior- 
ist’s procedure is vitiated by his failure to take account of 
himself. However much he may confine his observations to 
external behavior it is his own thought process that sets the 
problem, purposefully pursues his defined end, interprets and 
“controls” behavior, and builds his mechanistic philosophy 
by rationalization out of the result, all the while using what 
he refuses to recognize or name as thought. At every stage 
he is using tools whose existence he denies both in himself 
and in his subject. If thinking were only what Watson claims 
it to be, would not knowledge be impossible to man? 

The behaviorist not only omits thought but the most highly 
intelligent behavior which shows a foreknowledge of events, 
which takes into account the distant and the unseen, past, 
present and future. Intelligent behavior involves the delib- 
erate, conscious, calculating use of imagination and reason, 
dealing with ideals and possibilities which have as yet no 
material existence but which are most potent in determining 
future behavior. 


Watson also denies that there are any mental images. All 
images and ideas as well as mind are eliminated. “I should throw 
out images altogether,” writes Watson. Bertrand Russell points 
out that in denying the reality of images Watson “has been 
betrayed into denying plain fact in the interest of a theory.” 
Such was the consensus of opinion at the Oxford Congress of 
Philosophy.1. In a flash one can recall a whole cathedral or 
landscape or mathematical diagram or a color without a word, 
explicit or implicit. Mozart at the completion of a great com- 
position could both see and hear the whole production in a 


* “British Journal of Psychology,” October 1920. J. B. Pratt says, 
“The English psychologists who participated, without a single excep- 
tion, put themselves on record as unalterably opposed to any attempt 
to identify consciousness with behavior. To these English thinkers 
the proposal seemed preposterous.” h 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 71 


moment of time.t So there flashed in an instant of inspiration 
upon Sir William Rowan Hamilton the whole solution of the 
complicated problem of the quaternions.2, But according to 
Watson no mind has the power of vision or imagery; there is 
only a mechanism functioning in explicit or implicit physical 
behavior. Is not this an over-simplification by an omission that 
leaves out the deepest significance of life itself? 


Dr. Seba Eldridge, in his thorough examination of all the 
principal mechanistic and vitalistic theories discussed in his 
“Organization of Life,” shows that while there are physico- 
chemical processes in the body accompanying psychical states, 
life cannot be accounted for entirely in mechanistic terms.® 


The mechanist proposes to account for everything in physicos , 
chemical terms. Undoubtedly some sort of physical action is 
involved in all thought processes, but can it account for such 
processes? How can we account for the solving of a problem 


in mathematics in chemical terms? Or, let us take a case of 

*“The unelevating humor of reducing thrilling music to the brushing 
of horse hair against catgut is apropos of the over-simplification 
evinced in some quarters.” “Behavior and Psychology,” p. 96, 

#In outward behavior he was talking to his wife but “an under- 
current of thought was going on” which suddenly erupted in the 
discovery of the memorable equations by a flash of inspiration. This 
is perfectly intelligible on the basis of the Freudian unconscious but 
not on the basis of a prosaic stimulus-response mechanism. 

®To describe the physical action involved is not to explain how it 
happens that physical matter has these wonderful properties. To 
describe the process of thought is not to account for it. Dr. Eldridge 
says: “Inference, meaning, judgment and other cognitive processes, 
together with feelings, emotions, desires, memories, anticipations and 
purposes, constitute genuine causal factors in the behavior of organ- 
isms . . . and these causal factors cannot be completely identified 
with any or all of the chemicals and energies constituting the organism 
on its physical side.” “A type of non-physical causality has been 
demonstrated, and a most important field for it delimited.” Dr. 
Eldridge finds that a distinct category or categories of factors are 
operative in all mental processes which direct the responses of the 
organism as a whole. The cultivation of art, the speculative contem- 
plation of nature, our conceptions of space, time, logical and mathe- 
matical entities, and the pursuit of the so-called higher interests 
generally have not been, and presumably can never be accounted for 
by purely chemical or physical factors. Dr. Eldridge proceeds to 
show how Bergson of France, Driesch of Germany and J. B. S. 
Haldane of England oppose mechanistic theories as utterly inadequate 
to account for human behavior and creative evolution. Seba Eldridge, 
“The Organization of Life,” pp. 216-221, 392-452. See also “Emergent 
Evolution” by Lloyd Morgan. “~~ 


72 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


an abstract mental judgment.” For illustration, thirty years ago 
the writer faced the question of the decision of his life-work 
before going to India. India was a country he had never seen 
nor heard from on the other side of the earth. It was nota 
case of simple physical stimuli and sensory elements. 

' Into one abstract judgment, after a year of study, he had 
endeavored to assemble 1. an estimate of India’s past history 
of two thousand years in its spiritual quest, the present need 
of its three hundred millions—economic, medical, social, moral 
and spiritual—and the future possibilities of its great races; 
2. a balancing estimate of possibilities of a conjectural life- 
work in America; 3. an estimate of one’s personal qualifica- 
tions and disqualifications, with a, consideration of one’s natural 
desires for wealth, ambition, home, country, etc.; 4. a summary 
of the advice or information from a score of friends, a score 
of books and a mass of miscellaneous information; 5. the play 
of memory, imagination, sentiments, ideals, moral standards, 
social motives, spiritual aspirations; concepts of space and time, 
past, present and future; the persistent control of thought, feel- 
ing and purpose—all finally culminating in a single complex 
judgment and decision to go to India. The author’s whole life 
turned upon this moment’s decision. He spent four years in 
intellectual preparation, and then fifteen years working among 
the students of India to carry out that purpose, In the thirty 
years since that decision, through all the continuous change of 
scene, circumstance and environment, there has been preserved 
the identity of self-consciousness, the recurring memory of that 
moment’s decision, and the persistent purpose to carry out the 
ideals and aims there determined upon. Now, can the mechanist 
account for the hundred abstract factors, the thoughts, senti- 
ments, purposes and rational judgment of that decision by the 
chemical movements of certain molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, 
carbon, etc.? Can anyone in his right mind claim that he has 
done so? 

Dr. Eldridge points out the failure of many scientists to recog- 
nize the hypothetical character of the basic assumptions upon 
which they work. Unconsciously many convert these assump- 
tions into metaphysical dogmas standing for infallible truth and 
then hold in contempt other scientists who question “these 
assumptions.” “Their attitude is due to downright ignorance 
and the illiberality of mind that goes with it. . . . We find 
progress hampered by dogma, the outlook on reality limited, 
activity routine and sterile to a degree.” Professor Coe says 
“a mind is a dynamic entity manifesting itself in its states and 
its functions, not made up of them, and not capable of compo- 
Sition after the mechanical manner.” 


*“Outline of Christianity,” Vol. IV, p. 121. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 73 


Having regard then to philosophical behaviorism’s over- 
simplification of all the complex richness and variety of life, 
reducing it to a bare series of “S-R bonds,” or stimulus and 
response reactions; and recalling its glaring omissions of an 
adequate explanation of even animal behavior, of higher 
intelligence in man, of free choice among alternative possi- 
bilities, of consciousness and thought, of mental images, feel- 
ing and emotion, of imagination and of memory—in short, 
of all the rich variety and fulness that make up the higher 
ranges of life, do we not need here the warning of John 
Dewey given in another connection? “All cheap short cuts 
which avoid recognition of basic causes have to be paid for 
at a great cost. . . . They perpetuate the domination of 
life by . . . superficiality and evasion.”? 

Thirdly, we object to mechanistic behaviorism on the 
ground of its dogmatic denials. Among other things, strict 
mechanists deny the existence of purpose, or human freedom. 
Watson says, “It is the business of behavioristic psychology 
to be able to predict and to control human activity,” and 
again he says, “The behaviorist is a strict determinist—the 
child or adult has to do what he does’’* This he maintains 
is equally true of the saint or the criminal, of Jesus or Judas, 
of George Washington, the patriot, or Aaron Burr, the 
traitor. We should not praise the one nor blame or punish 
the other. No mental, moral, spiritual or volitional factors 
operated in any of these cases. “Every human action is a 
mechanical reflex response to a stimulus.’® 

William James in the “Dilemma of Determinism” distinguishes 
between old-fashioned, absolute “hard determinism,” “‘soft deter- 


+ John Dewey on Couéism in the “New Republic,” Jan. 24, 1923. 
?“Behaviorism,” pp. 11, 144. But compare “Psychologies of 1925,” 


p. 203. 

*Prof. K. S. Lashley, of the University of Minnesota, maintains 
that while behaviorists differ as to whether the facts of consciousness 
(1) exist and are capable of treatment, (2) exist but are unsuited to 
scientific experiment, or (3) do not exist; all behaviorists agree in 
the “conviction that a complete description and explanation of behavior 
can be given in terms of the physio-chemistry of bodily activity . . ., 
to me the essence of behaviorism is the belief that the study of man 
will reveal nothing except what is adequately describable in the con- 
cepts of mechanics and chemistry.” “Psychological Review,” 1923, 
Vol. 30, p. 238. 


74 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


minism,” and indeterminism. He defends the last as his own 
position.t The hard determinist is a fatalist. He believes that 
the universe controls us absolutely, and the ultimate forces in 
the universe are blind and unconscious. The soft determinist 
believes that the world is orderly and causally related. In so far 
as we can determine things we are a part of this causal chain. 
In so far as we are determined, it is not mechanically from 
without, but from within, by what we are, by our own habits, 
desires and sentiments. Though often obscure and hidden from 
us, conscious beings are governed by laws as definite as uncon- 
scious beings. | 

James thus states his own position of indeterminism: Some- 
times we are free and sometimes we are not. Determinism 
professes that those parts of the universe already laid down 
absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The 
future has no ambiguous possibilities. Determinism, in denying 
that anything else can be in its stead, virtually defines the uni- 
verse as a place in which what ought to be is impossible. I 
cannot understand regret without the admission of real, genuine 
possibilities in the world. The indeterminism I defend, the 
free-will theory of popular sense based on the judgment of 
regret, represents the world as vulnerable, and liable to be injured 
by certain of its parts if they act wrong. In moral respects the 
future may be other and better than the past has been. The 
belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief 
in Providence. Suppose two men before a chessboard—the one 
a novice, the other an expert player of the game. The expert 
knows all the possible moves, and he knows in advance how to 
meet each of them. The victory infallibly arrives, after no 
matter how devious a course. . . . His world was safe; no 
matter how much it might zigzag he could surely bring it home 
at last. The great point is that possibilities are really here, 
Whether it be we who solve them, or he working through us. 
Determinisms, suppress by their denial that anything is decided 
here and now; all things were foredoomed and settled long ago. 
If it be so, may you and I then have been foredoomed to the 
error of continuing to believe in liberty? 

McDougall in his chapter on Volition in “Social Psychology” 
would probably be classed by James as a “soft,” or modified, 
determinist, He defines volition as “the supporting or re-enforc- 
ing of a desire or conation (striving) by the co-operation of an 
impulse excited within the system of the self-regarding senti- 
ment.” He admits that there may be. as James says, moral 


*“The Will to Believe,” pp. 149-183. 

*“Social Psychology,” pp. 234-255. To quote McDougall with 
approval upon the question of freedom is of course not to endorse his 
theory of instincts nor his ideas on race superiority. ; 





THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 75 


“action in the line of the greatest resistance.” Action is the 
outcome of one’s own nature and mental constitution. The will, 
or the organized self in action, may re-enforce the weaker motive 
by an effort of attention, which is the essential form of all voli- 
tion. It may hold an idea at the focus of consciousness, identi- 
fying one’s self with some desired end which is held in view. 
It may combine a strong self-regarding sentiment of self-respect, 
with an ideal of conduct, summoning the determining motive 
that I, the self, shall do right. Thus we may add to the energy 
of the higher but weaker motive, that it may prevail over the 
lower but stronger, more primitive motive. We may thus build 
up a fixed, consolidated habit. It is normally true that a man 
does what he is; past character, or habit, determines present 
conduct. But it may also be true that a man is what he does; 
present action may help to determine future character. A man 
is thus not the puppet of blind fate from without, but acts accord- 
ing to laws largely determined from within. Fortunately the 
“soft” determinist leaves room for alternatives of choice, and 
therefore for moral responsibility. In justice to many behavior- 
ists, it should be said that while they would not use McDougall’s 
subjective terminology but would define their position in objec- 
tive terms, they are not “hard,” fatalistic determinists automati- 
cally controlled from without, but “soft” or modified determinists 
who believe they can practically “control” behavior from within. 


If the strict behaviorist is a “hard” determinist or fatalist 
and is compelled to do what he does as much as a Ford car 
or a gas engine to which personality is compared, he may 
scientifically “predict” behavior as in physics or chemistry. 
But in that case, how can he “‘control” behavior? It is true 
that he can change the habits of a child by changing the 
outward stimulus in the environment, but how can he do this 
without his own intelligent, purposive thought? Is the 
behaviorist himself an outwardly determined mechanism, or 
is he free to control and “make anything he wishes” out of 
these plastic subjects? Does not such language and behavior 
imply purposive activity? How can he control behavior, 
condition and recondition, unmake and remake habits without 
it? We agree with his practical freedom rather than his 
theoretical denials. 

While not agreeing with his mechanistic theories, we must 
recognize the possibilities there are of controlling human 
behavior and the extent to which our methods of training 


76 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


tend to predetermine attitudes and conduct. Race prejudice, 
religious bigotry, the servility of the servant class, these and 
other attitudes and practices have been determined by the 
environmental conditions under which individuals have grown 
up. Freedom is an achievement. There are many dogmatic 
religious leaders who would be willing to join with Watson 
in trying by the training of children to set, so they cannot 
be changed, the exact beliefs, attitudes and practices which 
will control them throughout life. In short, freedom or 
bondage, determinism or free choice are both practically pos- 
sible to human nature. 

That the universe is mechanical no one can deny, but that 
it ts ONLY mechanical no scientist can affirm. Wherever there 
is matter there is mechanism; but wherever there is mechan- 
ism there is law. We believe that it will be found in the 
end that wherever there is law there is mind.* There is 
certainly evidence of mechanism in nature. Man also begins 
his life in dependence. He is not born free. But gradually 
he wins a measure of “‘freedom,” in his personal and social 
life, in practical control of nature, in political organization, 
and finally in philosophic speculation. The weight of Greek 
history on the whole was for freedom. The Hebrews also 
held that man was free and responsible—‘Ye shall know 
the truth and the truth shall make you free.” The two 
greatest and freest peoples of antiquity believed in freedom 
because they had won it. 

We believe that men are directly conscious of freedom in 


*The mechanist falls into what Munsterberg describes as “the 
fallacy of psychologism,” treating his psychological findings as final 
for man and the universe. Within his narrow field as a psychologist 
Munsterberg was a determinist, but he recognized that this was only 
one area and aspect of reality. As a philosopher he believed in free- 
dom. Lotze seeks to show “how absolutely universal is the extent 
and at the same time how completely subordinate is the significance, 
of the mission which mechanism has to fulfill in the structure of the 
world.” ‘Nowhere is mechanism the essence of the matter; but’ 
nowhere does being assume another form of finite existence except 
through it.’ “Microcosmos,”’ Vol. I, pp. 16, 399. There is good 
precedent for determinism as an hypothesis. We have only to recall 
the names of Spinoza, Hume, Bacon, Spencer, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, 
Nietzche, and many more. ; 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY %7 


experience.t We do not claim that choice is entirely inde- 
pendent of heredity and environment, of habit, capacity, 
opportunity, motive—of all that we are. But, “partly fated, 
partly free,’ we believe that we have some real power to 
control behavior, to direct attention and often to act in either 
of two possible ways. We see mechanism but we believe that 
we experience purpose. We are conscious of 1. two alter- 
natives presented to us, 2. the choice of one as an end in 
view, 3. the experience of the end attained in accordance with 
the choice made. We believe that we were free to choose 
either alternative. We believe that between the idea of the 
end in view, and the experience of the end attained, there. 
intervened a means, a cause, an agent, an actor. And we 
believe that we ourselves were just these. We think that 
purpose is expressed in mechanism. We make machines and 
“control” them. But we do not believe that we are ourselves 
merely machines. Machines are made and controlled; it is 
men who make and control them. 


Kant says, “It is quite certain that we cannot cognize, much 
less explain organized beings . . . according to mere mechan- 
ical principles of nature.” Will the mechanist maintain that 
this whole process of endeavoring to prove that the will is free 
is a purely predetermined mechanism of necessity that we are 
compelled to make in just this way? Is not the very argument 
for freedom an instance of it? Vernon Kellogg says, “How 
little, how restricted, seem the explanations of the mechanist- 
biologists and the behavioristic psychologists of some of the 
simpler phases of human physiology and psychology, in the face 
of the glorified capacities of mankind in the fields of social 
organization, of art and literature and mathematics, and logic 
and religion! It is in the realm of what science doesn’t know 
that lie all these human capacities which really distinguish and 
define the very thing that humanness is.” 

We can give a reason for the faith in freedom that is in us. 
We would point to “creative evolution” and the appearance and 
development of mind in nature; to history and the solid fact of 
the growth of liberty in all realms of life; to the apparent 


* Whether as indeterminists or “soft” determinists they follow in 
a great succession who hold some hypothesis of freedom—Piato and 
Aristotle; Descartes, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel; Locke and Berkely; 
Eucken, Bergson, James, Royce, Schiller, and Rashdall; Carlyle, 
Emerson and an unnumbered multitude; in fact, the vast majority of 
common men. 


78 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


experience of causation and man’s belief that he is immediately 
conscious of freedom; to the psychology of attention and appar- 
ent self-direction; to the experimental evidence of the laboratory ; 
to the experience of effort; to the testimony of rational specula- 
tion that thinking humanity has not been persistently deluded; 
to the sense of responsibility in the feeling of innocence or 
guilt for the deed done which might have been otherwise; to 
the satisfaction or remorse, the joy or sorrow embodied in 
enduring character; to society’s praise or blame of a supposedly 
free agent ;—in short to the total experience of life as an open 
challenge, a hazardous invasion, a glorious adventure in a living 
universe. With Sallust the libertarian we would believe that 
“every man is the architect of his own future.” 


Freud and the Psychoanalytic Schools 


Behaviorism as a method of study of outward conduct 
has thrown new light upon human nature; psychoanalysis 
has turned a searchlight upon the working of the mind 
within. The functioning of the mind may be either normal 
or abnormal. A study of the abnormal has shown that it is 
only an extreme and unbalanced development of the normal, 
and this helps us to understand the working of the healthy 
mind. The man in our generation who has probably made 
the most unique contribution to the understanding of the mind 
is Professor Sigmund Freud, a Vienna physician. Charcot 
and Pierre Janet of the physiological French school had suc- 
cessfully treated mental disorders. Freud studied under 
these masters and began the treatment of mental cases by 
hypnotism with some degree of success. Under hypnosis 
the patient could often recall his forgotten past, disclosing 
the cause of his disorder, and receive suggestion from the 
physician that would lead him back to normal behavior. By 
the “cathartic method” of a mental house cleaning or of 
opening up the emotional flood gates the patient would often 
be able to get out of his system the source of his complaint 
and become readjusted to normal life. But there were many 
patients who refused to be hypnotized or with whom this 


; * We are indebted throughout this section to Prof. H. H. Horne’s 
‘Free Will and Human Responsibility.” 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 79 


treatment failed. Freud then discovered the more natural 
and successful method, by the free association of ideas, of 
enabling the patient to recall incidents from his past, espe- 
cially from childhood, which were found to be the source 
of later abnormal development. 

Freud works upon the hypothesis of emotional causation 
as mental determinism: Every word-slip and error in speech 
has a definite cause. Freud’s technic of free association 
encourages the patient to reveal his whole self and speak 
freely of whatever comes to the mind. In order to disclose 
the cause of the disorder in a life often emotionally unbal- 
anced, the patient is encouraged by the doctor to recall, and 
as it were relive his past, and to reveal his unfulfilled desires. 
These are often discovered in the patient’s dreams. Freud 
maintains that the dream always represents the fulfilment 
of a wish, often a concealed wish, repressed from conscious- 
ness while the patient is awake. The dream may reveal a 
desire that goes back to an unsatisfied or perverted childhood 
experience, though its material may be drawn from events 
of the preceding day. The dream seeks to satisfy the patient’s 
wish in symbols by a series of dream pictures, thoughts and 
actions, like a moving picture film. So also the day dream 
represents realization in fantasy of what one has not been 
able to attain in reality. Jung believes that primitive man 
thought in this fashion and that the patient’s dreams reveal 
the primitive, instinctive and forgotten in life. The dream is 
egoistic; the dreamer is the central figure satisfying his 
desires which have been unrealized in actual life. 

This disclosing of the past, this revelation of depths in 
one’s self unrealized or unsatisfied, forgotten but still con- 
trolling behavior, led Freud to develop a theory of the uncon- 
scious. This of course is an unproved hypothesis. The older 
psychology overemphasized conscious perception and the 
reasoning process. Freud believes that the power of con- 
scious reasoning was a later development in civilization. It 
played a small though important part on the surface of 
mental life, But below that lay the vast fundamental, non- 


80 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


rational and often unconscious activities of the real self.* 
Here were the instincts, emotions and desires, the drives and 
urges that, like the lava in the volcano, might erupt into 
conscious activity. Our waking conscious life is but a small 
fraction of our real selves. We are seldom what we think 
we are. There at the base of our being are relics of the 
animal, the savage and the child. And these are not feeble 
survivals like the vestigial appendix, but the live and surging 
passions, desires and instincts that furnish the drive and 
dynamic of all our life. 

Man’s mind is not primarily intellectual, but volitional. 
His whole nature is geared, not primarily for thought, which 
is a rare and difficult and later acquisition, but for action. 
Man is not so much a thinking, as a feeling, striving animal. 
Action is more often instinctive than rational. Whether we 
recognize it or not it springs from instinct and is a purposive 
striving toward a goal. Our inherited instincts are the chief 
raw material in the formation of character, in cooperation 
with the influence of environment. They are charged with 
emotional energy and give strength to the passions and power 
to the “will.” The will is the organized self in function, it 
is character in action, or the self in movement. Thus the 
will is conceived, not as a separate faculty or entity, but a 
function or activity of the organized self.” 

Our desires may find expression that is spontaneous and 
uncontrolled, or they may be expressed through remote and 


*In this brief treatment we shall let the “unconscious” represent 
that of which the individual is not aware without discussing its nature 
psychologically. Freud says, “The psychic processes are in themselves 
unconscious, and those which are conscious are merely isolated acts 
and parts of the total psychic life. . . . There are processes of the 
nature of feeling, thinking, willing and there is such a thing as uncon- 
scious thinking and unconscious willing.” “A General Introduction 
to Psychoanalysis,” p. 7. We shall not attempt in this brief chapter 
to give an adequate account of the system of Freud and other con- 
flicting schools but rather the later developments of Freud’s theory 
by McDougall and the eclectic school of emotional psychology repre- 
sented by such writers as Tansley, Hadfield and Crichton Miller. It 
is only fair to say, however, that this is not Freud. His followers and 
foes frequently run Freud’s terminology and thought into their own 
molds, and use him for their own ends. 

*See Dr. J. A. Hadfield, “Psychology and Morals, ” p. 70. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 81 


abstract intellect. They may be diverted to higher channels 
useful to society. In this case we have the behavior of the 
saint, patriot or social reformer, but the drive from the 
unconscious is there and powerfully operating. 

The unconscious contains all the forgotten experiences 
and desires that cannot be recalled at will; it may be man’s 
archaic heritage, his natural self which has been outgrown 
or left behind as incompatible with his later civilized develop- 
ment. It seems to be made up of the physiological memories 
of whatever has influenced him, perhaps since conception, 
but probably at any rate since some time before birth. 

The unconscious may be your servant. It may wake you 
in the morning at the proper time, or enable you to get off 
at the street or station desired, even when your conscious 
mind is occupied with your reading. Or, the unconscious 
may be your master. It may explode in animal or savage or 
childish behavior, in emotion, in passion, in unsocial activity. 
But servant or master, the unconscious is there. Freud 
probably more than any other man has helped us to under- 
stand the unconscious. For him an instinct is a blind urge 
that will seek to find expression in a wide range of outward 
behavior. — 

The Freudian finds many instincts in man but believes 
most of them have a common root in the basic urge of sex. 
He would group most of the others under the ego instinct. 
This begins with the satisfying of hunger and develops into 
striving for self-protection, self-development, seif-realization, 
etc. Others would add the herd instinct, or man’s desire to 
associate with and seek the approval of his social group. 

Now these primitive, dominant instincts are often in con- 
flict. To gratify one’s sex desires brings him into open 
warfare with the customs of the group, and with himself, 
conflicting with the demand of self-respect and other ideals. 


*Freud says, “Instinctive impulses which one can only call sexual 
play an uncommonly large role in the causation of nervous and mental 
diseases. . . . Civilization was forged at the cost of instinct satis- 
faction. The sexual impulses are sublimated, i.e., they are diverted 
from their sexual goals and directed to ends socially higher. But the 
result is unstable. The sexual instincts are poorly tamed.” “A 
General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” p. 8. 


82 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


This strife of instincts means mental conflict or civil war 
within the mind, as, for instance, between self and society, 
sex and religion, sex and the herd, patriotism and the family 
and so on. The human soul has been the seat of age-long 
moral conflict. A classic example is found in Paul’s struggle, 
recorded in Romans, between good and evil, the new man of 
reason and the “old man” of instinct and habit. To avoid 
the pain of this conflict the urge of one of the instincts must 
be gratified; the other must be repressed from action and 
from obtruding clamorously in thought where its presence 
is disturbing. The conflict is not often fought out to a finish 
but one of the instincts is suppressed, ignored, or imprisoned 
as it were in the unconscious. 

Though repressed into the unconscious the instinct may 
still be alive and active. It may form there a “complex.” A 
complex is a system of emotions and ideas left in the mind 
by a conflict of the primary instincts. If the desire is iso- 
lated, repressed, imprisoned in the unconscious, it then 
becomes a complex which seems to try to escape or demand 
satisfaction, either in the waking or sleeping, in the conscious 
or unconscious life.* 

Two conflicting desires cannot both be satisfied. Repres- 
sion of one or the other must take place. Every such repres- 

* According to Dr. J. A. Hadfield, of London, our instinctive emo- 
tions are grouped around objects and ideas. If we consciously accept 
these they become our guiding sentiments; if we unconsciously accept 
them they go to make up our dispositions; if we reject and repress 
them we call them complexes. These lie below the organized self 
but emerge in dreams, in nervous disorders or abnormal conduct. A 
nervous or physical breakdown is frequently caused by a conflict 
between two instinctive impulses. These complexes may result in 
“objectification” where we hate and preach against our own sins of 
which we are unconscious, or “overcompensation” where we lean 
over backward to the other extreme, or they may emerge in tempta- 
tion which is the objectification of our suppressed evil, or, conscience 
which is the voice of our repressed good. Our disorders may be 
1. organic, with a physical cause, or 2, functional from a conflict of 
the mind, or 3. moral diseases due to unconscious repressed complexes, 
or 4. “sins” from the conscious choice of the self, from the acceptance 
of a low ideal. Religion, in one aspect, is man’s craving for com- 
pleteness, while “conversion” results in the reorganization of his 
emotional life. Happiness is found in the harmony of the instinctive 


emotions. It depends not on uncontrolled self-expression but on true 
self-realization. “Psychology and Morals,” pp. 43-52. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 83 


sion involves conflict. If it is successful it is solved to the 
satisfaction of the individual. But usually repression is 
either not successful or results in compensatory conduct, at 
times unwholesome. Where the ordinary expression of an 
instinct is either for the present undesirable, as in the sex 
instinct of young people before marriage, or is no longer 
socially useful, as in fighting, then it may find an outlet in 
some other way. This is called sublimation and means the 
temporary or permanent satisfaction of an instinctive desire 
in other than the ordinary expression, but in a way which is 
constructive and socially useful. It is the foregoing of an 
immediate gratification of a primitive desire in ways person- 
ally or socially harmful, for a nobler, richer and more lasting 
satisfaction on another and higher level of life more useful 
to society. An illustration of sublimation might be found in 
Florence Nightingale, denied marriage, finding satisfaction 
for her sex and maternal instincts in the creation of a new 
system of nursing in the Crimean War. 

For the most part sublimation is unconscious. Analysts 
tell us that it cannot be had by force of will. The new and 
higher activity must seem of worth, of interest and appeal 
intrinsically. It is chosen for its own sake. Not perhaps 
for years will the struggling person be aware that the new 
interest has replaced the old. 

But these native drives may find direct expression in the 
finest ways. So sex relations may become not the gratifica- 
tion of lust on a mere physical basis but the mutual giving 
of the whole personality in the deepest love. Sex as a great 
pervasive part of life furnishes the source and drive of the 
purest love, of manhood, womanhood, fatherhood, mother- 
hood, parental care, heroism, sacrifice, service, chivalry, the 
love of beauty, of art and of much that is highest in morality 
and religion. Socrates’ challenge, “know thyself,” needs to 
be applied to the unconscious as well as to the conscious, to 
the inward urge as well as the outward behavior. 

If the repression of an instinct is unsuccessful it is like 
a festering sore discharging its poison into the system, or to 
change the figure, it is like a seditious prisoner plotting 
escape by unlawful means, 


84 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Freud finds hunger and love, or the ego and sex instincts, 
as the basic urges which insure self-preservation and the 
propagation of the species. For the positive aspect of the 
sexual instinct Freud uses the hypothesis of the libido, by 
which he means sexual hunger, or the basic desire of life. 
Freud holds that abnormal behavior and specific diseases 
arise chiefly from the sexual function in its repression or 
perversion, in conflict with the ego instincts. The primitive 
demands of the sex life seem to threaten the individual’s 
self-respect and self-preservation. When denied and re- 
pressed their dynamic urge may substitute other satisfactions 
or abnormal expressions by circuitous paths. These “owe 
their origin to a conflict between ego and sensuality” and are 
compromises in which the unconscious finds partial satisfac- 
tion. 

Around the repressed longings, systems of associated senti- 
ments and ideas are built. They are spun as a tangled web 
in a “complex” which centers in some suppressed desire. If 
this desire finds no normal expression in outward behavior, 
and if it is not successfully sublimated in some higher activ- 
ity, it begins to seek an outlet in other ways. It may mani- 
fest itself in dreaming, at night or by day. It may seek 
fictitious escape in a world of unreality, or find escape in 
other ways, such as nervous breakdown. The dream is often 
an expression of a wish sustained by the purposive desire of 
“nstinct; it gives expression to the repressed; it follows the 
primitive type of the thinking of the savage in symbol and 
imagery; it often gives expression to sexual desires in dis- 
guised forms, since the subject has been forbidden appearance 
in public consciousness.? 

Dreaming may serve as a safety valve for repressed 
tendencies, but day-dreaming is a step toward the abnormal. 
If it becomes excessive it may take the place of real achieve- 
ment, it may blur the sense of reality, it may lead to making 
the unreal seem real in creating a fictitious world, or finally 
lead to irrational or immoral conduct. Instinct unsuccess- 


“Freud says, “Dreams are the removal of sleep-disturbing psychic 
stimuli by way of hallucinated satisfaction.” “General Introduction 
to Psychoanalysis,” p. 110. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 85 


fully repressed may find outlet not only in dreams but in 
abnormal conditions and behavior. Vague fears and anxie- 
ties may possess the mind. One becomes anxious about his 
employment, his support, his health, his family, his reputa- 
tion, success or ambition. In shell shock the patient’s unad- 
mitted fear of being a coward may have resulted in physical 
paralysis to prevent this disgrace.’ 

Repressed desires may lead to the segregation of the con- 
demned attitude or complex in the “dissociation” or separa- 
tion of the personality. One may develop two or more selves 
as a Dr. Jekyl, the social worker, and a Mr. Hyde, the 
criminal, and thus lead a double life in public and in private. 
Or the disintegration of his personality may set in. 

These and other types of abnormal behavior may result 
from the unsuccessful repression of conflicting wishes. In 
such conflicts the unconscious may build up a “mechanism 
of defense” to protect oneself from the recognition of tenden- 
cies in one’s nature which are obnoxious. Many persons 
dare not know themselves. All kinds of behavior may have 
the unconscious motive of building up a defense against a 
feeling of inferiority or an “inferiority complex.” Or the 
unconscious may construct a “mechanism of compensation,” 
or over-compensation, as when Theodore Roosevelt in oppo- 
sition to his physical weakness in youth developed his later 
ageressive pugnacity. Again, the unconscious may develop 
a “mechanism of escape’ by constructing fictions, or ideals or 
utopias to satisfy the mind when it finds no rest in the world 
of the actual. Countless utopias, pagan and Christian, have 
promised some millenium or heaven as the only escape from 
hard reality. 

Or one may seek escape in “rationalization,” the finding 
of fictitious reasons to justify conduct determined by the 

* Hadfield shows that in a shell shock hospital, the men who are 
paralyzed, blind, deaf or dumb are suffering from disorders which, 
though physical in their symptoms, originate not in the body but in 
the mind, in disorders due to the disturbances of the emotions. The 
breakdown is the result of conflict between the sense of duty and of 
self-preservation. Physical and mental symptoms are often due to 
defects in character. Moral problems often lie at the root of these 


disorders. The psycho-physician helps the morally sick. “Psychology 
and Morals,” pp. 1-7. _ ' 


8¢ NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


unconscious. This is very common both in philosophy and in 
our daily life. Thus we “rationalize” our hate and killing 
in war time by a hundred excuses furnished by an eagerly 
believed propaganda about “Huns,” or a philosophy that 
makes our conduct justifiable and heroic. Thus men de- 
fended slavery and every other evil that they wished to 
maintain. The conduct is instinctive or unconscious, the 
“reason” is afterward manufactured to order by the con- 
scious mind. Most of our “principles” are the rationalizing 
of instincts formed in childhood. So we rationalize and 
excuse manifold wrongs in our personal conduct or the exist- 
ing social order, just because it satisfies our instinctive desire, 
or is a habit or conventional custom. In short, we act chiefly 
from personal impulse and social custom, and then “ration- 
alize” our conduct, but we do very little independent, rational 
thinking. As Emerson says, “The hardest work in the world 
is to think.” Almost our whole American educational system 
from kindergarten to college is planned to produce safe repe- 
tition and “rationalization” rather than rational thought. One 
of the many results of the new psychology is its teaching us 
to understand human nature and expose its illusions. 

In the treatment of patients by psychoanalysis Freud goes 
upon the basis that every symptom is a distorted expression 
of a repressed wish-complex, buried or banished in the 
unconscious by the mechanism of repression. He maintains 
that when the process of repression is reversed and the com- 
plexes are brought into the light of consciousness and fused 
in the main body of the personality, the abnormal manifesta- 
tion ceases. Freud early abandoned the method of treatment 
by hypnosis for that of “‘free association,’’* where the patient 
is asked frankly to relate the various thoughts that spon- 
taneously come to his mind. This involves an account of 
the patient’s symptoms, his early life, and his dreams which 
may reveal the unconscious gratification of repressed wishes. 

Feelings which the patient holds for another person usually 
undergo a “transference” toward the physician. The per- 


? Free association is now discounted by some Freudian practitioners, 
who deal primarily with emotional transference in present situations. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 87 


son’s early love for and dependence upon his mother, or his 
conflict with and opposition to his father may be transferred 
to the analyst. The patient may have his conflict with his 
father turned into opposition to anyone in authority, or he 
may make any friend or religious worker or the physician 
a father or mother or love substitute. The patient may 
transfer to the physician the feeling of gratitude, affection, 
hatred, fear or jealousy.* 

If the patient lives over again the repressed emotions, 
feeling them in connection with an actual person like the 
physician, the latter may at the right time break this bond 
and enable the patient to gain full insight into the buried 
conflicts and achieve release from them. He is thus helped 
to make the transfer from dependence on the physician to 
independence. The practice of this Freudian theory is obvi- 
ously a very delicate and dangerous operation.” 

It is a dangerous thing to deal with the emotional problems 
of others when one is not himself free. It is especially 
hazardous to deal with members of the opposite sex under a 
system so largely involving sex, and calling for confession, 
or at least self-revelation by free association, with the lia- 
bility of the “transference” of affection to the analyst. One 
practitioner records in the ‘““New Republic’ the “Confessions 
of an Ex-psychoanalyst.” He tells how he enjoyed having 
people fall in love with him and lording it over them.* The 


1S. Freud, “Collected Papers,” Vol. I, p. 293, Vol. II, pp. 344-364, 
Vol. III, p. 139. E. Jones, “Papers on Psychoanalysis,” p. 330. 

? Some psychoanalysts who do not closely follow orthodox Freudian 
practice would seek other methods of readjustments for the patient 
such as “facing the problem,” “resolving the conflict,’ “harmonization 
of purposes,’ “re-education,” “reconditioning,” “sublimation,” “reins 
tegration of personality,” “strengthening of the will,” “habit forma~ 
tion,’ “building up of character,” etc. 

*One psychologist, as an opponent of psychoanalysis, writes, “Who 
knows whether there is a subconscious mind, or a complex, or # 
libido? At present they have nothing but a group of concepts cone 
noting subjective phenomena, plus an empirical method which some 
times succeeds. At a meeting of the Academy of Medicine last year 
psychoanalysts admitted they could claim only a small percentage of 
successes. The method of transference seems to me to be filled with 
grave problems. One of my best friends, a young minister, is being 
divorced by his wife. She is to marry her psychoanalyst because 


88 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


priest in the confessional, the minister, the teacher and the 
individual worker are all liable to the same danger in greater 
ot less degree. 


Freudian Dangers and Values 


The first possible limitation or danger in Freud’s system 
is the too exclusive emphasis upon sex. He makes it the 
equivalent of almost the whole instinctive and emotional life 
in a “pansexuality.”’ He felt forced to do this by the situa- 
tions be found among his patients. Though this is undoubt- 
edly a dangerous overemphasis it is probably not so dangerous 
as the morbid conspiracy of silence, ignorance and evasion 
with which conventional society has too long ignored the 
basic normal fact of sex in human life. Probably Freud’s is 
an unconscious over-compensation for our criminal neglect. 
It must be remembered that sex is probably the most perva- 
sive and dynamic of any aspect of personality and that Freud 
does not use sex in a restricted sense but as denoting the 
entire emotional love outlet of the personality which is essen- 
tially a part of sex. 

Another error, especially in his earlier writings, is found 
in his lax use of terms without clear definition, his sweeping 
generalizations based on insufficient data, his often crude 
and fantastic illustrations, and his inconsistencies of state- 
ment. His aim is always practical and he is negligent or 
impatient of academic accuracy. He often seems to be an 
artist rather than a scientist. Woodworth maintains that 
“psychoanalysis gives us a narrow and one-sided psychology, 
utterly lacking in perspective.” This is doubtless true as it 
is likewise of extreme behaviorism and introspectionism. 

Added to the above mentioned limitations of Freud and 
his followers, psychoanalysis has suffered, as have all reli- 
gions and cults, from the character of some of its repre- 
sentatives. Some quacks have brought it into ill-repute; 


of a negative transference. I have known of three such cases. I 
would much rather put my faith in people who view life objectively, 
than in those who go off on subjective sprees. Nothing has yet been 
demonstrated about the unconscious.” 

*“Journal of Abnormal Psychology,” 1917, p. 194. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 89 


as they have at times all medicine. Some have turned liberty 
into license in the gratification of the sex instinct. 

Another fault of the Freudians is their sectarian tendency 
to become a “closed coterie.’ Some of Freud’s followers 
seem to be almost guilty of hero worship. 

A symposium in the Psychological Review of May, 1924, 
on the “Contribution of Freudism to Psychology” empha- 
sizes many of the values of psychoanalysis. With all his 
limitations Freud has added a new dimension to psychology. 
He has also given it a new vocabulary suited to the wider 
range of investigation.1 Psychoanalysis has been a challenge 
and an inspiration to psychology itself, and has awakened a 
new interest in the public. It has turned from an abstract 
and academic investigation of momentary fleeting states of 
consciousness to a practical interest and object. It has not 
only cured thousands of seemingly hopeless cases among 
abnormal patients but it has given us a better understanding 
of the normal man. 

Psychoanalysis has given psychology a new center, starting 
not with an outward stimulus or situation or action, but with 
the person as the chief factor in the case. It has at this point 
an advantage over extreme behaviorism in having recovered 
this dynamic center for psychology. It has turned from 
purely impersonal mechanistic patterns, to the purposive, 
volitional and dynamic. It has enlarged and enriched our 
conception of human personality. It has diverted us from 
atomistic and intellectualist abstractions to an integrated 
dynamic conception of the whole man. It has suggested a 
healthy self-criticism and candor and equipped us better to 
understand human nature. It has shown us our hidden 
dangers and how to overcome them, which a facile over- 
simplification of outward mechanistic behavior ignores or 
pedantically denies. It has given a larger content to psy- 
chology, reclaimed the forgotten and unrecognized of the 


* The old psychology spoke in terms of faculties, of sensation, per- 
ception, imagination, reasoning, memory, sense organs, affective states, 
etc. The “new” speaks of complexes, conflict, rationalization, projec- 
tion, compensation, r@pression, regression, identification, symbolism, 
dream, wish-libido, the unconscious, etc. 


90 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


past, and the whole realm of the unconscious. McDougall 
says, “I believe that Professor Freud has done more for the 
advancement of psychology than any student since Aris- 
totle.’’t 

Several followers of Freud have departed from him, cor- 
recting or supplementing some of his limitations and short- 
comings. Dr. C. G. Jung has increasingly repndiated Freud’s 
“pansexuality” and has enlarged the unconscious by including 
all the instinctive bases of our mental life. He avoids the 
fallacy of the “pleasure principle” and bases man’s purposive 
strivings in his instinctive nature. For him the libido is the 
general basic urge or elan vital; it is not confined to sex. 
Its two principal manifestations are the sexual and nutritive. 
The instinct of power also plays an important part. Jung 
leaves the remaining instincts vague and undefined. 

Dr. Alfred Adler also departs from Freud in making sex 
subordinate and giving first place to the ego or self-regarding 
tendencies. He holds that the desire for power as a compen- 
sation for organic inferiority is the most fundamental 
element of our nature. Every bodily or mental attitude roots 
in a striving for power. From the desire for superiority 
or godlikeness arise neurotic disorders. 

Ranck, one of Freud’s pupils and one of the greatest living 
analysts, has shown the basic problems involved in the 
adjustment from infantile dependence to the responsibility of 
adults. 


The Gestalt Psychology 


We turn now from three schools, the introspectionists, the 
behaviorists and the psychoanalysts, to a fourth, the Gestalt. 
The first gave too exclusive attention to subjective conscious- 
ness, the second to outward behavior, the third to the sub- 
conscious instincts. Man is not all mind, or body, or sex. 
The introspective Gestalt school reminds us, even more than 
behaviorism and psychoanalysis, that man is man, a unit, a 
whole. From the time of Locke for more than two centuries 
psychology has been too largely an analytical mosaic which 


*“Outline of Abnormal Psychology,” p. 8. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 91 


had lost its unity. The most significant thing in psychology 
today is that it is turning from atomism to think of the 
organism as a whole. 

In 1912, the year that Watson began to teach behaviorism, 
Wertheimer in Germany first announced the Gestalt theory. 
He was followed by Koffka of the University of Giessen and 
Kohler of the University of Berlin. The word “gestalt’’ 
is taken in the sense of configuration, or pattern, or unity. 
The leaders of this school were dissatisfied with the old 
atomistic psychology with its hair-splitting distinctions, with 
the artificial “faculties” of the mind, the minute analysis 
which dissects details only to miss the significance of the 
whole. 

The Gestalt, or configurationist school, has broadened the 
scope of experimental psychology and extended the field of 
scientific experiment to the more complex forms of expe- 
rience. Kohler of the Gestalt school, in his “Mentality of 
Apes” based upon long experimentation, arrives at practically 
the same conclusions as R. M. Yerkes of Harvard in his 
“Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes: a Study of Ideational 
Behavior.” The long study of Kohler on the chimpanzee 
shows that this animal has two great lacks, the technical aid 
of speech, which can name, classify, accumulate and share 
experience; and mental images which so aid man in his 
thought. Despite these fatal handicaps the chimpanzee 
apparently went beyond mechanism in intelligent conduct. 
It consistently showed insight, strong feeling, and purposive 
behavior. It overcame and surmounted obstacles by round- 
about methods, successfully used tools, made implements to 
accomplish its ends, intelligently handled and manipulated 
objects, collected and built them together to reach its end, 


1The word in German means shape, form, frame, appearance, 
character, configuration, or outline of a whole figure. All behavior 
is conceived as a constant series. of Gestalten, or configurations. 
Instead of the simpler reflex of the behaviorist, this school thinks 
of a larger unit of action involving the whole organism. It deals 
with complete actions, mental and physical, instead of the abstract 
isolation of either inner states or consciousness or outward behavior. 


92 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


and even chose correctly between photographs ninety out of 
a hundred times.* 

Professor Koffka in his “Growth of the Mind” makes a 
valuable criticism of extreme behaviorism. He shows the 
danger of Thorndike’s analysis of human behavior as a mere 
chain of reflexes.2 He maintains that science should not 
refuse to evaluate factual material of any sort, for true 
science involves a fair facing of all the facts in a given field. 
An outward act of behavior may be purely automatic, but 
the reasoned description of it has a significance beyond 
mechanism. Koffka places emphasis not upon individual 
stimulus-response bonds but upon the total situation with its 
total complex response. 

The methods and findings of the Gestalt school are already 
being fruitfully applied in practical life. Miss M. P. Follett 
in her “Creative Experience’ makes suggestive applications 
of its principle of integration: “When differing interests 
meet, they need not oppose but only confront each other. 
The confronting of interests may result in either one of four 
things: (1) voluntary submission of one side; (2) struggle 
and the victory of one side over the other; (3) compromise; 
or (4) integration. . . . The best way out is always when 
someone invents something new.” 

Professor Burnham in “The Normal Mind” has worked 
out a valuable synthesis of the Gestalt and other schools 
applied to our present educational and social life. He shows 
that from the very first of a child’s mental development the 
process is from wholes to parts. The child exhibits its 

*To reach a high objective the chimpanzee Sultan “lays the heavy 
box flat underneath the objective, puts the second one upright upon 
it’; and after failing to reach it, seeks a third box, places it on the 
other two, and climbing carefully reaches the objective after long 
and patient effort of purposive behavior. The chimpanzee begins 
with something like an inventory of the situation and uses insight 
in “a complete solution with reference to the whole lay-out of the 
field.” Kohler, “Mentality of Apes,” pp. 142-198. ‘Psychologies of 
1925,” pp. 145-160. 

*“The nature of mental development . . . is not the bringing 
together of separate elements, but the arousal and perfection of more 
and more complicated configurations in which both the phenomena 


of consciousness and the functions of the organism go hand in hand.” 
Koffka, “Growth of the Mind,” pp. 16-20, 90-97, 113-173, 356. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 93 


highest form of integration in conscious attention. It de- 
lights in expending energy in motor reactions involving the 
whole organism. To child and adult the most disintegrating 
influence is uncontrolled emotion. Among other causes of 
disintegration of personality are failure in one’s work, failure 
to be understood, disparagement of the personality, injustice, 
reflection on one’s honor and slights to one’s self-respect. 
If genius is freedom from ordinary inhibitions, says Profes- 
sor Burnham, we must seek to free and develop the whole 
personality in education and government. 

The Gestalt school shows that identity is a fact of person- 
ality as well as change. In practical life we know men 
whole, rather than by analysis. Unity and consistency mark 
the developed man. To understand a man we must know 
not only his reflexes but his driving interests and sentiments 
and their organization. In a word we must follow analysis 
by synthesis; we must see life whole if we would know it 
truly. Has not this been the besetting lack of psychology for 
the last half century? 


Conclusion 


We are glad for the contribution of each of the four 
foregoing schools of psychology that may help us to make 
a synthesis in order to view man as a whole. The chemist 
by analysis may tell us that water is nothing more than H,O, 
or two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. But there 
are countless atoms of hydrogen and oxygen in the world 
that are not water. A molecule of water is something more 
than three atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. There is a new 
entity, a new unity, a new creation. Analysis shows the 
parts, but only synthesis the whole. The whole is often more 
than the sum of its parts. The physiologist may point out 
that this man’s body is made up of a hundred and fifty 
pounds of flesh and bones. The introspectionist points to 


*See Burnham’s “The Normal Mind,” pp. 677-686. “Journal of 
Abnormal Psychology,” 1924, p. 132. See also Geo. Humphrey in 
“Journal of Educational Psychology,” October 1924, p. 401; H. Helson 
in “American Journal of Psychology,” April 1926, p. 189; J. R. 
Cantor, “Journal of Philosophy,” 1925, p. 234. 


94 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


the elements in his mind, the behaviorist to his animal-like 
behavior, the Freudian to the sex and other unconscious 
urges. Even if we combine them all the result falls far 
short of the reality. A symphony is something more than 
the sum of its notes or phrases in isolation. It is a unity, 
it is created by the composer who is a unity, performed by 
the cooperation of personal units and can be appreciated only 
as a whole, by a whole person. By all means let us analyze, 
construct our octave, our technic of composition and per- 
formance. But let us not imagine that this is music, or that 
the dissection of the morgue is life. 

The old psychologist saw man as a combination of facul- 
ties. The behaviorist sees a bundle of conditioned reflexes, 
the Freudian sees sex complexes, but we may use the con- 
tributions of these various approaches to understand more 
thoroughly personality as a whole. We maintain that the 
parts of a unified act can only be understood in the light of 
the whole, behavior in the context of intelligent purpose. 
Psychology now becomes the study of the whole data of con- 
sciousness and behavior, their relations and the laws of their 
formation and change. 

Because man is a unit he has a passion for unity. The 
scientist seeks for one law underlying particulars, the philoso- 
pher has a horror of pluralism or dualism and a passion for 
monism. ‘The mind shows a tendency to unite, consolidate 
and simplify. The characteristic of the normal mind is 
integration, mental unity or wholeness. The child begins 
with the perception of wholes, not parts, and proceeds from 
wholes to parts as belonging to the whole. The astronomer 
groups his constellations, the mathematician his diagrams, 
the genius discovers a clue to reality in some newly discov- 
ered unity, such as the law of gravitation, evolution or 
relativity. 

Concentration upon each of the special fields of psychology 
has proved fruitful. But a synthesis or integration seems 
now to be needed to supplement the valuable results of 
analysis of the various schools. If we regard these four 
schools—introspectionists, behaviorists, analysts, and con- 
gifurationists—not as each, or all, teaching the truth, the 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 95 


whole truth and nothing but the truth, but as tools for our 
use, as means of experimentation for getting at the facts, as 
invaluable supplementary contributions, we shall then be in 
a position to evaluate and profit by them all. It was natural 
that in the first flush of every discovery it should be too 
exclusively emphasized. For ourselves, we shall let one neu- 
tralize the other so far as their exclusive claims and one-sided 
sectarian emphasis are concerned. But we shall let each 
supplement the others as we endeavor to utilize both analysis 
and synthesis, induction and deduction, the study of mind 
and body, introspection and behavior, the conscious and 
unconscious, the part and the whole. 

The idea of the whole self brings us to the problem of 
personality. The self is gradually built up out of experience 
in the interaction between the individual and society. It is 
a social product. The self is not born whole as a complete 
personality, but as a bundle of potencies, as a potentiality 
of selfhood. Place the child of the saint or philosopher alone 
in the jungle and it never becomes a person but an animal. 
Only society personalizes man. The self is never an isolated 
atom, or separate fact. We know ourselves in relation to 
other selves. 

The child first looks out on the world as a “big, buzzing, 
blooming confusion,” upon fixed things, and moving things 
called persons. The latter begin to train and mold him with 
their “mores,” customs or morals. Born a helpless babe, the 
child has yet the promise of personhood. It begins to use 
the “old brain” of the past heritage, as does the new born 
animal. Gradually it develops the use of the conscious “new 
brain” and its cortex of higher activities. It slowly becomes 
an organized self by the formation of habit. The self is 
unconsciously integrated and organized around its master 
motives as selective agencies. The child is not born with a 
ready-made conscience but is socially conditioned and taught 
what is right and wrong. He does not inherit ideas but the 
capacity for ideas and activity. His self-consciousness is 
developed only in association with other selves. His social 
life becomes incarnated in his personality. No one is self- 
made. Alone, man is only an animal. Personality is the 


96 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


resultant from the interaction of individuality and society. 
The growth of self-determination in freedom will mean the 
harmonizing of all inner energies and outer determining 
factors. 

When the organized self has been gradually built up and 
integrated, personality becomes “the key to reality.” “The 
undivided self is the citadel of the integrated personality.” 
We come thus to the core of the self, not as a transcendent 
or separate soul substance, but as a true person. We now 
find not only a bundle of functions, but a functioner. We 
conceive a person to be more than an “event,” more than a 
system of events. More than mechanism, a person is a vital 
organism. ‘‘A person is a complex, experienced as belonging 
to a center.”* However vast and intricate this flowing com- 
plex of experience, there is a central identity maintained 
throughout constant change. For this experience is always 
centered in self-consciousness which joins and unifies it as a 
whole. This self-consciousness reduces a disordered chaos 
to an ordered cosmos. It somehow binds in one intelligible 
whole thinker and thought, functioner and function, con- 
sciousness and behavior, subject and object. I seem to myself 
to be a self-conscious subject-object, an I-Me. I ama person 
who at once thinks and can survey his thought. I bind in 
one conscious moment my survey of the long past, my expe- 
rience of the fleeting present, my anticipation of the multi- 
form and undetermined future. A thing, an event, a machine — 
or an animal cannot do this, but only a human self. Yet I 
am not lost in the universe. The pivotal center of conscious- 
ness remains. Always there is a principle of unity, the 
background of a united whole. I am not merely a flowing 
mass of sensations and experienced events, nor an idle 
spectator of the passing film of outward things. I am a 
creator. With all my limitations, I plan, choose, determine; 
I accept or inhibit. I start the so-called “self-starter,” I ride 
on the controlled explosions of energy, I guide the steering 
wheel of life. I drive directly or circuitously and persist- 


“Dr. Brightman, “Lectures on Consciousness,” quoted by Earl 
Marlatt in “What Is a Person,” Boston University Bulletin, No. 15, 
to whom we are indebted here. 


THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 97 


ently to my end. Personality is the sum total of what I am. 
It is the totality of myself as a center of conscious experience. 

Everywhere I utilize mechanism in my body-machine and 
the universe; but everywhere I transcend it. There ever 
remains the irreducible “I.” As Marlatt says, “A person is 
an organic whole of reality—a microcosm reflecting the 
macrocosm—consisting of a psycho-physical complex, organ- 
ized about an equally active, rational, dynamic center, and 
capable of carrying, creating and perpetuating values.” I 
may not grasp such words or their full meaning, but I di- 
rectly experience myself. Iam! And I am aware! What 
is aware? That irreducible center, that dynamic unit and 
entity revealing itself in its states and functions but not made 
up of them, that self that is a whole of experience which has 
never yet been disproven nor explained away—-Personality. 


Cuapter IIf 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 
THE NEED OF GOD 


Do not the signs of the times point to the imperative need 
of a new discovery of God? In our opening chapter we 
observed the brilliant achievements of the new science which 
has placed almost incalculable forces in our hands. These 
forces may be used for destruction unless we can gain the 
spiritual control which will make a new humanity capable 
of using the new science for the highest ends. Our study of 
the new psychology showed, with all the rich store of knowl- 
edge of human nature which it has made available, that many 
of its leading advocates are offering hungry humanity a 
stone in place of bread in their philosophy of materialistic 
mechanism. This negative hypothesis supported only by the 
most meager results, without prospect of adequate evidence, 
is actually undercutting the potential faith of many today. 
It would seem that these need the self-validating experience 
of an irrefutable discovery of God. 

Our chapter on the new reformation shows that all great 
spiritual awakenings in the past were occasioned by or con- 
sisted in a rediscovery of God in terms of contemporary 
need. We endeavor to show that the situation in the nation 
at large and in the churches in particular imperatively calls 
for a new discovery of God in our own day. The inter- 
national situation reinforces the same demand. In Russia 
we have the first instance in history of a consistently main- 
tained government with an official creed of atheism. This is 
not in a brief chaotic period such as followed the French 
Revolution; nor in some obscure academic corner of the 
world. It is in a vast consolidated empire which is boldly 
challenging the whole social order of “Christian” civilization. 

If we pass from the field of science and psychology, and 
from the national and international situation, we shall find 

98 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 99 


the deepest need of all in our own individual lives. Beyond 
all disputes concerning dogmas and creeds, denominational 
and party strife, scientific or philosophical theories is not the 
supreme demand of the hour the rediscovery of Reality and 
of the Source of life and power which may be made available 
to meet the deep spiritual needs of our time? There is need 
also that we submit without reserve or qualification all our 
belief to the most searching and critical analysis and sweep 
away any outgrown accretions of dogma and superstition, 
that we may get down to the bedrock of reality and build 
anew a firmer and truer structure in our religious and social 
life. 


Either-Or 


If we endeavor to face the ultimate problem of human 
existence as to the nature of reality, or of the source and 
ground of life, it would seem that if we are to think clearly 
three successive pairs of alternatives present themselves to 
us. 


1. Either, there is a God, or, there 1s no God. 

2. If such there be, God is personal, or, God is impersonal. 

3. The attitude of the individual will be characterized by 
the will to believe, or, the will to disbelieve. 


This does not mean, of course, that a man can or should 
believe whatever he wishes, apart from the evidence. It 
means the will to test, to find and to follow the truth at all 
costs. In this realm of religion, however, vast issues are at 
stake. There is probably in most of us, consciously or un- 
consciously, an emotional bias for or against each of these 
alternatives. Therefore it will be practically impossible for 
anyone to maintain himself on the theoretical razor edge of 
absolute neutrality or complete indifference. Each will find 
himself in a position where, whatever his “rationalization,” 
he is practically for or against the idea of a God, of a per- 
sonal God, and of the demands of vital religion upon him.? 

1 As in everything else, we have all been socially conditioned, favor- 


ably or unfavorably, for or against religion. For instance, the 
Russian Communist after five centuries of oppressive Czarism, reject- 


100 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


In Professor James’ classic essay on “The Will to Believe” 
he, of course, does not imply that in blind credulity we should 
try to believe anything we wish. Two hypotheses, however, 
both equally tenable, but neither demonstrable, may be presented 
to us. James shows that the call to decision between them may 
be an issue either living or dead; either forced or avoidable; 
either momentous or trivial. The question of God is a genuine 
- option that is forced, living and momentous. It makes a tre- 
mendous difference to life and conduct. Moral questions are 
imperative and cannot wait for sensible proof which is not 
available. “If your heart does not want a world of moral 
reality your head will assuredly never make you believe in 
one.” On many issues faith creates its own verification. 
Whether in science or religion, we often act on an hypothesis 
which is afterward validated in experience, or else a negative 
result forces us to revise our hypothesis. 

According to James, science says that things are; morality 
says, some things are better than others; religion says, the best 
things are the more eternal and we are better off now if we 
follow the best. Not one of these propositions for science, 
morality or religion can be theoretically demonstrated in ad- 
vance, but they can be acted upon and progressively validated or 
invalidated in experience. In the meantime, it is better in all 
fields to act upon the positive, the more promising and, adequate 
hypothesis. Better risk the chance of error, than the loss of 
truth. Faith does not consist in trying to believe something 
we know is not so. It is rather a scientific venture in action 
by which we try to transform a reasonable probability into a 
certainty of personal experience. Where the intellect cannot 
prove or disprove either alternative we are free to believe and 
act upon any living option or adequate hypothesis that promises 
a solution to the imperative problems of life. “In all the im- 
portant transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark.’”’* 


The Significance of God 


It matters profoundly how we act upon the above alter- 
natives, for as we have seen, the issue is living, it is momen- 
tous and it is forced. I must do something. To disbelieve, 


ing what was all too often a caricature of religion with its monstrous 
social injustice, and naturally associating the only religion he knew 
with reaction, superstition and oppression, was inevitably prejudiced 
against the whole idea of God and religion. He may think he has 
rejected it upon purely rational grounds, whereas his emotional “set” 
against it is overwhelming. 

*Wm. James, “The Will to Believe,” pp. 3-31. 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 101 


to postpone or to suspend judgment is perforce to act mean- 
time upon one hypothesis or the other. I act either as if 
there were, or as if there were not a God. At the switch 
two tracks begin to separate by a very slight angle but one 
may soon lead east and the other west, one toward and the 
other away from the sunrise. To show the difference that 
this choice makes in life, in outlook, attitude, action and 
result, let us take two typical statements from among a count- 
less number that might be chosen, from a man with a will 
to disbelieve and from another with a will to believe; one 
from a man who sadly takes the negative and the other from 
one who triumphantly takes the positive hypothesis. The 
quotations are merely intended to show that it profoundly 
matters which view we take and which hypothesis we test. 
We quote both writers with deep respect and sympathy. 

The negative position can hardly be better stated than by 
Bertrand Russell in “A Free Man’s Worship.” This out- 
look implies 


“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of 
the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his 
hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome 
of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no 
intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life 
beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, 
all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, 
are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, 
and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably 
be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins . . . Brief 
and powerless 1s Man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, 
sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, 
reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless 
way; for Man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow 
himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only 
to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble 
his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of 
Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built: 
undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free 
from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly 
defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, 
his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary 


102 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have 
fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.” * 


The fine mind and spirit of the writer and the beauty of 
the style do not hide but only accentuate the stark reality 
and the ghastly implications of this negative alternative. 
Let us place in sheer contrast with this the outlook on life 
by another who does believe in God,? 


“Be of good cheer: for I believe God ... We know 
that all things work together for good to them that love 
God . . . Now what follows from all this? If God is for us, 
who can be against us? The God who did not spare his own 
Son but gave him up for us all, surely he will give us every- 
thing besides! What can ever part us from Christ’s love? 
Can anguish or calamity or persecution or famine or nakedness 
or danger or the sword? No, in all this we are more than 
conquerors through him who loved us. For I am certain 
neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither 
the present nor the future, no powers of the Height or of the 
Depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to part us 
from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord . . . For the sons © 
of God are those who are guided by the Spirit of God. And 
when we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is this Spirit testifying along 
with our own spirit that we are children of God; and if children, 
heirs as well, heirs of God—for we share his sufferings in order 
to share his glory. Present suffering, I hold, is a mere nothing 
compared to the glory that we are to have revealed . 
With all my labours, with all my lashes, with all my time in 
prison I have been often at the point of death; five times have 
I got forty lashes (all but one) from the Jews, three times I 
have been beaten by the Romans, once pelted with stones . 
through labour and hardship, through many a sleepless night, 
through hunger and thirst, starving many a time . . . for I 
am strong just when I am weak... AS sorrowful yet always 
tejoicing !” 


Let us note that, though neither can prove or disprove by 
logic, each of these two men is equally assured in his own ~ 
mind. Mr. Russell says, “All these things if not quite beyond 
dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which 
rejects them can hope to stand. . . . Only on the firm 


*Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship (Mysticism and 
Logic) ,” New York, 1918, p . 46 ff. Italics are ours. 

* Quotations from The Aiea Paul, Moffatt’s translation, Acts 
28 :25, Romans 8 :14-39, 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 103 


foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation 
henceforth be safely built.” Contrast the assurance of the 
other warrior: “I know whom I have trusted, and I am 
certain he is able to keep what I have put into his hands till 
the great Day. The last drops of my own sacrifice are 
falling ; my time to go has come. I have fought in the good 
fight; I have run my course; I have kept the faith. Now 
the crown of a good life awaits me . . . and not only me 
but all who have loved and longed for his appearance.’ 
The one builds on the foundation of “unyielding despair,” 
the other of triumphant faith and hope and love. 

If it should be said that our second illustration is drawn 
from the classic past, from a man who did not have to face 
our modern problems, then as one among many let us take a 
modern student, a tennis champion and prominent in three 
other branches of athletics. His plans for a life work have 
fallen in ruins about him, he has just lost an eye. Yet with- 
out even losing his fine sense of humor, he writes: 


“Life has become so beautiful, so much more than my capacity 
to respond. Tomorrow I go into the city and I'll meet thousands 
of folks all more worthy than I am yet I cannot believe they 
are as happy. Oh, for a chance to know how to bring peace 
and love and kindness and meekness into these unhappy lives— 
to unshackle them and let them out into the freedom of pure 
love. I believe there isn’t a heart beating that doesn’t yearn 
for purity and love, for a God to whom to trust everything. 
Why, I couldn’t be discouraged; I have lost an eye, but what 
of that in the face of what has been gained? My life is no 
longer mine. It is here for some purpose and the most I can 
do is to find that purpose and throw my life into it. There is 
nothing but happiness in this world unless we are looking for 
reasons to be hurt. It will be October before I can have my 
artificial eye. I’ve asked them to put in it ‘a spark of human 
kindness,’ ” & 


In this chapter we shall abandon the effort at theoretical 
demonstration and follow the way of experimental discov- 
ery. We feel that this method is true to human nature and 


1“A Free Man’s Worship,” p. 46 ff. 
22 Timothy 1:12, 4:6-8. 
* Letter from Robert Rugh of Oberlin, 1926. 


104 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


experience; it is endorsed by the testimony of history. How 
many have been convinced by all the centuries of philosophic 
“proofs”? Yet multitudes of men have discovered God 

‘for themselves by the simple method of friendship. Men 
in every age and under all conditions of life, men in all 
religions and with no religion, men who began as agnostics, 
atheists, or materialists of various kinds, have entered into 
this joyous and triumphant experience which is capable of 
repeated verification. 

For illustration, we recall many instances among Russian 
and other Slavic students who because of their situation 
had lost all faith and hope. The writer was present at the 
first conference held by Czechoslovak students after the 
war. Five centuries before, their national leader, John Huss, 
had been burned at the stake. Their Bibles had been burned, 
their language forbidden, their schools closed, their liberties 
denied, and religion had been so long connected with tyranny 
and oppression that the majority of the students had turned 
from all organized religion, whether Catholic or Protestant. 
Many had become atheists. 

At this student conference we began to study a book that 
many of them had never read, which because of their preju- 
dice we called “the book of John Huss’—the New Testa- 
ment. Man after man entered into a new experience in the 
fresh discovery of God. In the middle of the conference, 
however, the students called out one of their popular leaders 
who cut from under some of them all hope or faith. The 
atheists rallied and seemed triumphant. The students left 
the meeting to go to their afternoon field sports and swim- 
ming. One of them sank and was drowned. They came 
back with the dead body of their comrade. Because of their 
prejudice they would enter no church, Catholic or Protestant, 
and would have no priest nor minister for the funeral. The 
writer was asked to make a few remarks standing in the 
dust of the road before they removed the body. Over that 

_ open coffin we asked those atheists, “What have we here? 
Is there merely a hundred and fifty pounds of flesh—with 
no soul, no God, no life beyond, no hope for this boy? Is 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 105 


there no hope for his sorrowing parents, no hope for us? 
Or, is there a God, a life beyond, a larger life into which 
this boy has perhaps already entered?” There was a letter, 
unfinished, found in the pocket of his coat on the shore. 
The boy had written, ““We have caught a new vision at this 
conference. A great task awaits the students of our land. 
I see no hope for the world but the love of Christ. I must 
be a better man. There is a new life for me. It is pos- 
sible...” Here over that open coffin we saw the “great 
divide,” the final issue—God, or no God. Was he capable 
of responding to personal relations or incapable? Had they 
the will to believe or to disbelieve? In the closing meeting 
every student spoke. The majority took their stand for God. 
They wrote the name of God and Christ into their constitu- 
tion. They applied for membership in the World Student 
Christian Federation. They had kindled again the fires of 
faith where five centuries before John Huss, their patriot- 
martyr, had been burned at the stake. 


On another occasion we were having meetings among the. 


he, 


students in Russia. One of them who was about to commit 
suicide, after attending one of the meetings, wrote the 
following letter: “I am a medical student troubled by doubts 
and passions. I had lost all faith and saw no meaning in 
life. I decided to put an end to my days by suicide. Once 
I loved God, in my infant recollections, but afterwards all 
went downwards in my life. I ceased to pray and to believe 
in him. Day and night I thought of committing suicide. 
I considered it to be cowardly but could not conquer myself. 
I gave up books and study. On the 25th of January I left 
my room-mate for the last time, saying: ‘Good-bye; tomor- 
row I will cease to exist.’ A life without meaning, without 
aim, without eternity, with nothing but human pleasures, 
was disgusting to me. I saw the notice of your lectures on 
‘A Rational Basis for Religion,’ ‘The Meaning of Life,’ etc. 
I went, and on returning, I went to sleep for the first time 
during the last two months without thoughts of suicide. I 
now read the Gospel daily and am again able to pray. I do 
not know what the future will be, but now I desire again to 


NY 


106 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


live. In any case, I shall prolong my life for the next three 
months to make the test of Jesus Christ by reading the 
Gospels again as you asked us. Pray for me.’ The last we 
heard of this student she had found the meaning of life and 
was on her way to relieve the peasants of Russia in the 
famine-stricken area. 

For thirty years and more we have seen students and 
others who followed this method discover God for themselves 
out of the midst of doubt, scepticism, failure and sin. All 
through the centuries is not this the method that has yielded 
results, the method of discovery? 


We Already Know God—In Part 


, Before proceeding upon our quest of the discovery of 
- God let us pause for one thought. If there be a reader of 
these lines who is in doubt, or who thinks he has not found 
God, may we put to him this question? Are you so sure 
that you have not found him? Perhaps you know God 
already but do not know his name. 

If God is not an object of perception, you need not expect 
to come suddenly upon him, as you might catch a workman 
at his task. You will not find him as a residuum in your 
test tubes nor at the end of your microscope or telescope nor 
at the conclusion of an argument. For God is not so much 
the conclusion of one argument as the necessary ground of 
all. He is like the sun. “He is the one object in the world 
at which we cannot steadfastly gaze, yet in the light of which 
we see everything else.” 

No, you will never suddenly come upon God—nor upon 
yourself. You will find no objective proofs of either the 
self or its Source, apart from the body and nature. God 
and the self are both too intimately near to be seen or objec- 
tively experienced, like the eye that cannot see itself save 
in some material reflection that interrupts its vision. Prac- 
tically all the means of life are mechanistic and material; all 
its ends and higher values are unseen. Even some of the 
most important things in the material world are not only 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 107 


invisible, like the air, electricity, gravitation, energy, but have 
never been directly experienced. 

Now let us raise the question whether you do not already 
know God and are perchance in invisible contact with him 
at every point in your life. We have not reached the point 
of inductive definition, but let us suppose that God may be 
all that there is of Reality; that he embraces all the true, 
the good, and the beautiful; all life, all personalities in con- 
scious freedom. Suppose that personalism and pantheism 
are but two sides of one shield of reality; that nature is 
but the living garment of God, a sacrament that we share 
with God, and that all the universe is not merely a mechanism 
but an organism—the organ of God. Suppose that each 
person is but a unit cell in the infinite organism of life, a 
center of consciousness, a personalized manifestation of a 
God who is himself personal or supra-personal. Suppose 
that God is no whit less than we are at any point but infinitely 
more, that God is in our best, meeting us, surrounding and 
supplementing us, grounding us in the Reality in whom we 
live and move and have our being—a God adequate to the 
universe and answering to our fractional and fragmentary 
need. 

This would indeed be an hypothesis of hope. Perchance 
it is not too good to be true. But if it zs true, then such a 
God we know already in just the proportion that we know 
life itself, for he is the Source of all life. If there were 
not something of nature in us we could not know nature. 
If we were not personal selves we could have no conception 
of other selves. If there were not something of God in us 
we would have no means of recognizing him. In self, nature, 
persons, God, we may find that there are but four steps to 
God, and yet that he is in each step, the beginning and end, 
the author and finisher, the continuous Source of all our life. 
As Pascal said, “Thou wouldst not seek me hadst thou not 
already-found me.” This came to Sabatier “like a flash of 
light . . . the solution of a problem that had long appeared 
insoluble.”* 


1Quoted by W. E. Hocking, “The Meaning of God in Human 
Experience,” p. 147. 


108 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Many a man has had some unfortunate experience in the 
past and has rejected some caricature of religion. He has 
reacted from bigotry, superstition, or obscurantism; from 
irrational or immoral views of God. In rejecting half-truths 
he has perhaps been true to his best. Though he cannot yet 
believe in God, because it seems too good to be true, or 
because mechanism seems to claim the field, or because of 
some complex or past prejudice, yet he does the best he 
knows. In seeking to choose good against evil, truth against 
falsehood, beauty against disharmony, he is, however, uncon- 
sciously, recognizing a universal quality, an absolute value, 
a relation to reality and a loyalty to the truth of things. If 
so, on the basis of our hypothesis, he is in so far true to God. 

Or, let us suppose that he is true to humanity. He is 
living with a passion for justice for the needy and exploited, 
for the suffering poor. If so, and if our hypothesis be cor- 
rect, whether he knows it or not his passion for humanity 
is at bottom a passion for God. And this at the very point 
of the deepest need of life, that is, of God himself. “He 
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen cannot love 
God whom he hath not seen.” And conversely, he that 
loveth his brother whom he hath seen, is thereby loving 
God whom he hath not seen. Far more than the praises of 
his attributes, God must crave help for needy humanity as 
his chief problem. The most touching service that could 
be rendered to a great man would be to his crippled child, 
if he had one. “Inasmuch as ye did it to these least ye did 
it to Me.” 

Dr. Parkhurst tells of a blind girl who when told of God 
said, “I did not know his name, but J know him.’ There 
are doubtless many that thus know God already. In our 
daily life we are forced into contact with reality—perhaps 
it is Reality, with God in it or behind it. We face truth 
and error, and all unknowing we may choose Truth. We 
struggle between good and evil, and in our victory we have 
chosen the Good. We see beauty over against ugliness, 
deformity, disharmony, and choose Beauty. We cannot 
alter the principles of mathematics, or the law of gravity 
or of chemical affinity; we cannot create water as we wish; 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 109 


but only as we obey, and combine H?O according to the law 
of their combination. Thus, in the unchanging laws of the 
universe we come up against the Absolute. We begin to 
divide 3 by 7 in mathematics and we can never finish. In 
our geometry, in astronomy, everywhere beyond the limits 
of our little finite we are in touch with a seemingly limitless 
Infinite. We begin our little life with the particular “TI,” 
“me,” and “my,” but in ever-widening circles of expanding 
experience, in ever larger generalizations, we find ourselves 
launched on the adventure of a vast and boundless universe 
and we pass from petty particulars to the Universal. We 
begin our infant life with complexity and chaos in a “big, 
buzzing, booming confusion,” but we finally discover a trend 
to order and progress and integration. Our chaos becomes 
a cosmos, our multiverse is found to be a universe, and we 
are driven on toward some ultimate Unity. The infant is 
born in a seeming world of things. But some of the things 
move and take shape and beckon us out till we become 
ourselves, and see other selves, in a world of persons until, 
beyond a world of lifeless mechanism, we reach Life and 
stand before the miracle of Personality. Thus step by step 
we learn to walk, and letter by letter we learn to spell the 
first meanings of our world until we learn a Name—that 
name is—God.1 


How Do We Find God? 


However I may interpret them, I face certain apparent 
realities in my experience. I am aware of Nature, I am 
aware of myself, I am aware of other selves. I experience 
a world of things, I experience myself, and a society of 
persons. Each presents a problem and an alternative. What 
is a thing, what is a person, and what is the relationship of 
the self, things and persons to one another? Is there any 
source or unifying principle in the universe? Let us call 


* Bishop Temple says, “Communion with the eternal is probably not 
quite unknown to any human being. Whenever a man feels the con- 
straint of moral obligation, he is in touch with the Eternal; for the 
maxim ‘because right is right to follow right’ is no creation of 
Time.” “Christus Veritas,” p. 41. 


110 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


this possible source God. We shall start with no formal 
definition that would set limits and bounds to the word 
“God.” For the present, until inductively we have discovered 
something of its nature, we shall let the word God denote 
the source of life. 

Let us frankly recognize at the outset that while there 
is much evidence, there is no final proof or disproof. We 
face the problem of nature, of the self, of persons and of 
the possible source of all, God. Not one of these four can 
be proved or disproved by science or philosophy or religion. 
If anyone would deny this let him attempt to convince a 
single doubter by his alleged “proofs,” be they positive or 
negative. No ultimate reality can be demonstrated, each 
must be discovered. Not one can be deductively determined, 
but each may be inductively discerned in experience. If a 
thing can be discovered, if it is immediately known in experi- 
ence, if it is subject to repeated experiment and is socially 
verifiable, if it becomes a tested ground of practical life, 
philosophical “proofs” become as superfluous as they are 
impossible. Let us then in turn test each of the above four— 
nature, self, persons and God. 

Let us begin with nature. We found in the first chapter 
that science rests upon certain undemonstrable premises of 
objectivity, rationality and universality. No scientist can 
prove the existence of the world with which he is working. 
But does he lie awake nights fearing that the world may not 
be there? Does he, with a will to disbelieve, demand 
“proofs” that nature exists before he will make his first 
experiment? No, consciously or unconsciously, with a will 
to believe, he assumes the fact of the world and starts his 
experiments. His hypothesis, or faith, is validated by each 
cumulative experiment, and becomes the more certain ground 
of his ever-widening experience. He leaves the philosopher 
to do the doubting and attempt the “proving” of the self or 
of nature. He is not even interested in the discussion. He 
is too sure of himself and of his daily experience with nature 
to doubt the reality of either. The same is true of any man 
with a vital experience in religion. 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD Lil 


We turn next to the self. I cannot prove what I am, but 
I know that I am. “I think, therefore I am.” As James 
says, “There is but one indefectibly certain truth ... that 
the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.” Twenty- 
five centuries of philosophy have not proved that the soul 
exists, and there is not the slightest probability that twenty- 
five centuries more of philosophy alone will do so. But we 
know in practical experience this immediate certainty of self. 

Whether determined or not, in apparently purposive con- 
trol men have built enduring characters from Aristotle to 
Einstein, from Jesus of Nazareth to his most humble follower 
of today. Philosophy and psychology cannot give nor take 
away the self. It cannot be demonstrated but it can be 
discovered, integrated, realized, known. 

It is the same with persons, or other selves. No one has 
ever demonstrated the reality of another person. We cannot 
prove the existence of our own mother or father, wife or 
husband, child or friend. But do we need or demand such 
proof? Philosophy did not give us our mother and our 
friends by demonstration, and it cannot take them away. A 
person may be as invisible as God is said to be. We cannot 
see the mind, the character, the self of the other; only certain 
physical manifestations to our physical senses. Yet who 
seriously doubts the existence of his mother or his friend? 


The Laws of Friendship 


Friendship is not made by demonstration but by discovery, 
the process is not one of logic but of love, or the desire of 
persons for one another, leading finally to the full sharing 
of life. Prof. J. H. Howson shows the conditions of human 
fellowship, or the principles of friendship, which may have 
an exact analogy in the discovery of God, if he is found 
capable of responding to personal relations. An ideal friend- 
ship is based upon common interest, common trust and the 
common sharing of life.t 


1President King finds a four-fold basis for an ideal friendship: 
1. Integrity, breadth and depth of personality, 2. some deep com- 
munity of interests, 3. mutual self-revelation and answering trust, 
and 4. mutual self-giving. Perhaps we may learn to know God just 


112 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Friendship originates in the discovery in another person of 
an appreciation which we ourselves have. The discovery of 
such an appreciation makes another person “real” to us and 
when two or more persons discover in one another a community 
of appreciation, they become real to one another in a sense 
of fellowship. The perception of this common appreciation is 
made possible through the physical manifestation of language, 
gesture and action. 

The objective reality of a friend is verifiable if the perception 
of the community of interest is capable of scientific testing. 
All friendship is built upon faith and must proceed one step 
at a time in a confidence that begets answering trust. As I 
take time to get acquainted I come to know a person, as I know 
a trustworthy person faith in him grows and this faith calls 
out response. Thus we advance by faith in answering trust 
and by mutual discovery in self-disclosure. 

Faith, in friendship, involves the belief in its objective valid- 
ity, growingly validated by intercourse. The critical faculty 
may examine the basis of the friendship and the community of 
interest upon which it is based, but when two persons fall in 
love there may be such a strong feeling of fellowship, such an 
overwhelming sense of the reality of the friend and delight in 
the friend’s presence, that the critical perception of the com- 
munity of interest may be entirely lost sight of, and one may, 
as it were, lose one’s self in the deepening discovery of another 
person. The self and the person loved become equally real. 
The depth and intensity of the friendship will depend upon 
the character of the appreciations shared, as its breadth and 
richness will depend upon their variety and extent. The con- 
stancy of the friendship will depend on the permanence of the 
common interest, upon the ability to communicate and share new 
interests and upon their ability to grow together in the ever- 
widening experience of life. It must be progressive as life 
itself is progressive and not static. There may be a real sense 
of fellowship based upon a single shared value, especially if 
the interest is dominant, but for full friendship there must be 
a full sharing of all the interests of life. Perfect love is com- 
plete mutuality or the full sharing of life. 

There may be, however, an unequal friendship as between 
parent and child, or God and man. The child cannot know all 
of the parent’s life, but the relationship will depend not upon 
complete knowledge but upon full sharing, not upon intellectual 
understanding, but upon community of interest. 


as we find a friend. Our friendship may grow as naturally and 
joyously as does a human friendship, and we may advance into the 
full realization of an intimate relation as close as, or closer than, that 
with our nearest human friends by exactly the same four-fold path. 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 113 


We shall now seek an answer to our first two questions: 
is there a God and is he capable of responding to human 
relations? We shall advance the hypothesis that there is 
a God accessible to his friends, who may be found, after 
the analogy of human friendship, by the full sharing of 
interests. We shall ask what his interests are which we 
must share and how we may increasingly discover him by 
the sharing of these interests. 


The Method of Discovery 


In the quest of the discovery of God we begin just as we 
would upon the threshold of any science, or of a human 
friendship. We endeavor to start without prejudice, without 
the constraint of any external authority, and build from the 
ground up. We begin with the most probable or adequate 
hypothesis, test it, revise it in accordance with further dis- 
covered facts and, after verifying it in experience, draw 
the legitimate conclusions. Without begging the question 
or trying to believe anything in advance, let us take the 
hopeful hypothesis that there may be a God, and that he 
may be capable of responding to personal relations. If we 
act as if there were a God, let us see if life responds and 
validates such an hypothesis or whether a negative result 
invalidates it. 

We cannot have an absolute dualism and an impassable 
gulf fixed between a source of blind, impersonal force, on 
the one hand, and a conscious, purposive intelligence on 
the other. Either the self and nature are both solely mate- 
rial; or the self and its Source are both of the stuff that 
purposive intelligence is made of. If man really has con- 
sciousness, then it is logical to ascribe consciousness to the 
cosmos, for we would not expect the part to be greater 
than the whole, the effect greater than the cause, man greater 
than God. If there be a God at all, he cannot be less than 
man at his best, though he may be infinitely more. 

In the discovery of God we start with the self. We must 
start at the only point of which we may be sure. Faith is. 
life’s self-declaration; reason’s business is to interpret it. 


114 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


We must believe in ourselves as real before we can believe 
in nature, man or God. The normal path of experience is 
from within outward. Man may start with his own con- 
sciousness and project it outward to interpret the universe 
after the analogy of himself. In so doing he starts with 
the surest and highest that he knows. Or he may reverse 
this earliest, most instinctive and natural process. He may 
project from without inward, from material and mechanical 
nature to the self and try to interpret himself as merely a 
material mechanism of response to external stimulus. Either 
is an unproved act of faith. Here, as everywhere, we are 
forced to an “either-or.” Either self is a thing and the 
universe merely a material thing; or else the self is a person 
and the universe a cosmic consciousness. Both are either 
mechanism or organism, blind force or purposive intelligence, 
ultimately impersonal or personal. We have resolved to 
start, however, with the positive and hopeful hypothesis of 
a cosmic consciousness capable of responding to personal 
relations with a purposive, personal self. 

As we begin with the hypothesis of an intelligent self in 
a kindred, intelligible universe, let us go forward to see 
whether or not we can discover God in the great areas of 
life where others have found the end of their quest—in 
nature, in man, in a world of values, in persons of spiritual 
genius, and finally most important of all, in personal 
experience. 


1. The Discovery of God in Nature 


Multitudes of men have discovered an experience of God 
in nature. The artist cannot tell nor paint the ineffable 
which he sees in Beauty. The poet sees “a Presence which 
is not to be put by.” The husbandman finds something 
more than earth and sky. The scientist often feels like 
Newton, “I seem to be a little child picking up the pebbles 
on the seashore of eternity”; or like Lord Kelvin, “forced 
by science to belief in God.” The philosopher has often 
found God in nature. The common man has felt that there 
was something beyond the visible, as one writes, “I have 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 115 


never seen a high mountain or the ocean or any other vast 
and beautiful sight, without a strengthening of my belief 
in God.” Thus nature speaks to many of something within 
or beyond the visible. 

The very first fact of human experience is the physical 
universe. We are born into and are a part of a visible world 
that obtrudes upon our senses with inescapable insistence. 
The longer we study it with microscope, telescope or spec- 
troscope, the more its wonder grows upon us. ‘The solid 
fact of the universe challenges us for an adequate explana- 
tion. It stirs us by the infinity of its magnitude, by its 
millions of light years. It amazes us by its complexity and 
yet more by its system and order. From the infinitely minute 
mathematical orbits of the electrons within the atom, to 
those of the infinitely distant heavenly bodies, all moves with 
apparent rationality and universality in one system of law. 
By its invariable reliability it gives us a dependable platform 
upon which to stand. 

As we have seen, Professor Henderson of Harvard has 
pointed out in “the fitness of the environment” the apparent 
definite and minute pre-adaptation of the physical world 
as the dwelling place of life. He shows that there was not 
literally one chance in a billion that a blind, material universe 
would be fit to sustain life and produce an ordered and 
progressive evolution upon the planet. Professor E. G. 
Conklin of Princeton agrees that, “The possibilities are 
almost infinite to one against the conclusion that the order 
of nature, the fitness of the environment, and the course of 
progressive evolution with all its marvelous adaptations are 
all the result of blind chance. ... In short, science reveals 
to us a universe of ends as well as of means, of teleology 
as well as of mechanism, and in this it agrees with the 
teachings of philosophy and religion,”* 

1 Charles Darwin reverently adds his conviction, “If we consider 
the whole universe the mind refuses to look upon it as the outcome of 
chance—that is, without purpose or design. . . . The theory of 
evolution is quite compatible with the belief in God.” “Life and 
Letters,’ Vol. I, pp. 304-307, “More Letters of Darwin,” II, p. 395. 


Thomas Huxley also found himself “utterly unable to conceive the 
existence of matter if there is no mind to feature that existence.” 


116 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


If the universe is everywhere rational and intelligible, 
there must be intelligence behind it. If mind has been 
evolved from it, it must be involved in it. If all is law, all 
must be intelligence. Our very terms of “law,” “nature,” 
“system,” “organization,” “evolution,” “universe,” betray 
the conviction that there is plan everywhere. If a newspaper 
brings an intelligible message to my mind, I cannot believe 
that the type set itself, or that it was a work of chance. 
Do not the works of a Shakespeare require nothing less 
than Shakespeare to account for them? What then does 
the universe require to account for it? Does it not speak 
with one voice to the open heart and to the ear that is not 
deaf as to Julian or Norwich, “See! I am in all things. See! 
I lift never mine hand from off my works, nor ever shall!” 
Thus the man who has discovered God in nature “has a confi- 
dence in the universe and an inner joy which the other does 
not know—is more at home in the universe as a whole, than 
other men,’”? 

If we begin to read this open book of nature, does it not 
speak to mind and heart and will? There may be some of 
its chapters hard to understand, which we shall have to con- 
sider later under the problem of evil, but does not nature 
speak an intelligible message to the mind? There is meaning 
here. The geologist, the physicist, the chemist, the biologist, 
the astronomer are beginning to spell out some meanings in 
the opening chapters of the book. Everywhere there is 
integrity and rationality. From its finest filaments to its 
farthest reaches it is one tissue of ideas and relations, so vast 
and so orderly that it seems to point not to blind chance but 
to Mind? 

* Pratt, “The Religious Consciousness,” p. 35, quoted by Evelyn 
Underhill, “The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today,” p. 16. 

* Dr. James Martineau writes: “What have we found by moving 
out along all the radii into the infinite? That the whole is woven 
together in one sublime tissue of intellectual relations, geometrical 
and physical—the realized original, of which all our science is but 
a partial copy. That science is the crowning product and supreme 
expression of human reason . . . Unless therefore it takes more 
mental faculty to construe the universe than to cause it, to read 


the book of nature than to write it, we must more than ever look 
upon its sublime face as the living appeal of thought to thought.” 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 117 


Nature speaks also to the heart. We are a part of nature 
and it is a part of us. “It stirs every emotion of our souls, 
it is a million-stringed harp which wakes and responds to all 
the feelings of our complex emotional nature.’ In its 
emergent evolution we find mother love appearing and the 
struggle for the life of others. Whoever has found the 
miracle of answering love in another life, whoever has found 
his own heart expanding with growing affection has found 
that, whatever its source, here in the heart of nature is Love. 

And nature speaks of power which may perchance imply 
purpose and will. We found that the new science revealed 
incredible power in every atom of the boundless universe. 
And yet this power is not running wild in chaos, but from 
each electron in its mathematical orbit, from each element in 
the periodic scale of its atomic weight, to the calculable 
motions of the heavenly bodies, these vast forces are mar- 
velously balanced and controlled. The power is not greater 
than the control. For illustration, if through a lifetime of 
consistent effort we see a Wilberforce with purposive striving 
working toward the abolition of slavery and the freedom of 
humanity, what do we conclude? Does such behavior indi- 
cate a mere fortuitous concourse of atoms, the haphazard of 
blind force, the necessity of blind fate, or does it reveal 
power under the control of purpose? And if we see, stretch- 
ing over hundreds of millions of years, the consistent and 
cumulative working of creative evolution producing the in- 
telligence, affection and purpose of man and embracing a 
thousand movements like that of Wilberforce, why should 
we have the will to disbelieve either its boundless power or 
that “one increasing purpose runs” through all? 

Finally, if man is an intelligent, loving, purposive indi- 
vidual unified in self-consciousness, is it not at least possible 
that the microcosm of the individual reflects the macrocosm 
of the ordered universe? 

Why should others not seek and find what Wordsworth, 
Tennyson and Browning, with the poets, artists and seers of 


118 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


all time, have ever sought and found—the discovery of God 
in nature? May we not see a 


Presence that disturbs us with a joy 

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 

Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 


2. The Discovery of God in Man 


The clue to the nature of God may be discovered in man. 
If, according to our hypothesis, there is a God who is re- 
vealed in nature, we would expect him to be most adequately 
known not by the lowest but by the highest in nature, which 
is man. Indeed there is no possible way to interpret God 
save by the analogy of one of the two aspects of our experi- 
ence, its highest aspect, mind, or its lowest, matter. Mature 
thought forces man to resolve his apparent dualism. He 
must believe that two separate islands clasp hands beneath 
the sea and are only two manifestations of one solid earth 
beneath. But on the surface he knows them as two, and on 
the surface of life his apparent experience is of two kinds, 
of matter and of mind. Presumably either the ultimate 
reality is akin to the lowest that he knows, matter and force; 
or to the highest, intelligence and personality. All man’s. 
ultimate values are personal. 

Man can only infer by the projection of his present limited 
experience. Frankly, his method must be either materialistic 
or anthropomorphic. Even when a Nietzsche utterly rejects 
the conventional system of ethics he can only conceive of a 
super-man. He cannot even imagine a third thing utterly 
foreign to his experience. God may be either a super-force 
or a super-Mind. But if the universe be anything more than 
a mere mechanism of matter and force, its source can only 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 119 


be personal or supra-personal; it must include all that is best 
in personality as man knows it. 

Man could do no other than make his god in his own 
image, writ large. But frequently he has projected into his 
conception of God his worst as well as his best. Browning’s 
Caliban imagines his god Setebos cruel, vindictive, arbitrary, 
and jealous like himself. As he tears his crabs limb from 
limb so would his god tear him. Many men in our own day 
project into their conception of God all their own selfishness. 
He becomes the chief.stay of their social order of special 
privilege and injustice. 

Was it not the method of Jesus to discover God in man’s 
best? Would not a man, he says, give to his importunate 
friend who needed bread, and what man would not give to 
his child necessary food? If ye then being evil give good 
gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly 
Father give the best to you? If a shepherd seeks his lost 
sheep, if a woman seeks her lost coin, if a father receives 
back his lost son, how much more will a heavenly Father 
seek and receive his own? Jesus discovered God in 
humanity. That is one reason why his message is so human 
and so true. 

God usually educates men through men. We recognize 
him most clearly when we see him transforming human char- 
acter and incarnated in human life. As Augustine says, “one 
loving spirit sets another on fire.” Thus the great unortho- 
dox, contemporary, Spanish mystic Unamuno says, “I believe 
in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath 
of his affection, feel his invisible and intangible hand, draw- 
ing me, leading me, grasping me. . . . I have felt the 
impulse of a mighty power, conscious, sovereign and loving. 
And then before the feet of the wayfarer, opens out the way 
of the Lord. . . . How do you know that the man you 
see before you possesses a consciousness like you . . . be- 
cause the man acts toward you like a man. And in the same 
way I believe that the Universe possesses a certain conscious- 
ness like myself, because its action toward me is a human 


*Luke 13:1-11, 15:1-32. 


120 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


action, and I feel that it is a personality that environs me. 

. Itis the Universe, living, suffering, loving, and asking 
for love.’ Why then should not we also press on where 
multitudes of men in every age have made the increasing 
discovery of God in man? 


3. The Discovery of God in Values 


Man is forced to face not only an outer world of fact but 
an inner world of value. All sensation forces upon man the 
outer fact; all thinking involves value. Explain it as we 
may, the experience of the race has gathered around man’s 
three-fold quest in his hunger for the true, his sense of obli- 
gation to the good, and his longing to realize the beautiful, 
in the harmonious exercise of function and the joy of satis- 
faction in the effort to make life whole. Man’s appreciation 
of value grades him in the scale of being and measures all 
his progress. He hungers for truth as the end of his intellect. 
He craves in beauty some satisfying object that shall corre- 
spond to his aesthetic nature.? But his appreciation of value 
centers in his moral sense of obligation. 

Modern psychology shows that there is no separate, in- 
fallible monitor or judge called “conscience.” Our ideas of 
right and wrong are socially conditioned by the customs of | 
our group impressed upon us. Our sense of duty is always 
relative and imperfect. Nevertheless, after a total study of 
a situation, once convinced of what is right or wrong, there 
is a feeling of absolute obligation to do the right. “We 


*M. de Unamuno, “The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples,” 
pp. 194, 195. So in all lands and in all religions God has been dis- 
covered in man. The Sufi poet cries, “O soul, seek the Beloved; 
O friend, seek the Friend.” Kabir in India can say, “From the 
beginning until the end of time there is love between me and thee: 
and how shall such love be extinguished?” Quoted by E. Underhill 
in “The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today,” pp. 8-11, 46. 

* No true artist dishonors his art by making it chiefly a mere means 
of private gain. Yet he is not justified in following it for its own 
sake unless beauty has a meaning in the universe, apart from the 
subjective emotion it arouses in men. He feels that in his devotion 
to beauty he is somehow loyal to the truth of things. Man’s pur- 
suit of beauty is a witness to his appreciation of an invisible reality. 
The same is true in his loyalty to truth and duty. 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 121 


needs must love the highest when we see it,’ and we needs 
must do it. The voice of duty is what our best self and the 
whole universe behind it bids us do. There is an inward 
source of vital power that insists that the moral interests 
shall be preserved at all costs. This moral sense may be 
developed and sensitized or it may be hardened, atrophied or 
destroyed. 

There is such a thing as physical blindness to the world 
of fact, and there may be a spiritual blindness to the world 
of value. By an over-simplification life may be emptied of 
its higher values and reduced to its lowest physical terms of 
mere matter and force. Life may be cheapened and degraded 
by negation until finally, as Fichte puts it, man has elected 
to be a thing and not a person. Or, life may be realized in 
the quest for its higher values. Professor Burtt completes 
his study of the “Metaphysical Foundations of Physics” with 
the conclusion, “no moral motivation comes to the average 
human mind by thinking of its world as ultimately matter. 
Rather it is when men are persuaded that their ideas and 
ideals are as real and efficacious as anything in the world.’ 

To cheapen life merely to the limits of the material and 
temporal may lead to the careless “eat, drink and be merry 
for tomorrow we die,” or to the cynicism of despair. But 
to discover with Kant not only the fact of the starry heavens 
above but the value of the moral law within, leads to the 
wonder of worship and to the indomitable hope of spiritual 
achievement. Man does not so much create subjective values 
as he discovers what is already there in the heart of the uni- 
verse, as the external stimulus of his own response. 

As we seek the true, the good and the beautiful, we find 
them. Reality responds. The universe discloses itself to 
the man who is true to the ultimate values. He that seeks 
shall find, because there is something there to be found. 
The right key fits the lock. If the universe were mere 
mechanism and if the fittest survive, we would expect that 
those who live upon this theory would live the best life. If 
on the other hand the ultimate fact of the universe is not 


* “Metaphysical Foundations of Physics,” p. 330. 


122 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


mechanism but purpose, if the values of the true, the good 
and the beautiful are absolute and are united in a perfect 
Mind and Heart and Will, then the recognition of value 
will get the best response of reality. 

Somehow the universe backs these values. Evil tends to 
disintegrate and destroy itself. The good abides and increas- 
ingly possesses the earth because the universe sustains the 
moral values. 

In so far as we are true to our best and realize the values 
of life, we do not merely infer that there is a God, but we 
are in so far discovering God himself. The values of the 
true, the good and the beautiful unite in the one absolute 
value of Love. Only in so far as we learn to love can we 
realize life. Only by love can we really ever know another 
individual and only by the full sharing of our lives, as an 
advancing faith meets an answering response, can we ever 
know the ultimate source and ground of all Love. If we 
postulate the possibility of a good God we shall discover him 
increasingly in our best, until we find in the end that all 
around us there is an ocean of beauty and life and love in 
God. 


4, The Discovery of God in Persons of Spiritual Genius 


Has not the chief method of human progress in all 
branches of knowledge been the discovery of new truth by a 
leader and the sharing of the discovery in personal experi- 
ence by others? Occasionally some man of genius makes a 
supreme discovery which all may share. Thus Aristotle 
becomes a pathfinder in philosophy. Thus Phidias stands 
at the creative summit of the plastic art. He gathers and 
expresses all that was finest in Greek sculpture before him 
and leaves a standard of incarnate beauty and an inspiration 
for all who follow him. Thus Bach incorporates what is 
best in German music and makes possible Beethoven and all 
who follow him. Newton discovers certain great laws in 
science and the experience of the human race is enriched. 
Homer influences and inspires all Greek writers, as Dante 
discovers the possibilities of Italian and Shakespeare of 


\ 


| 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 123 


English literature. So in the moral and spiritual sphere 
among many prophets and seers, moral teachers and founders 
of religions one stands preéminent in the discovery of God. 
As his greatest follower described him, he became “The 
eldest in a vast family of brothers.” 

We need begin with no theological theory or definition of 
his person. Somehow men in his presence discovered God 
for themselves. In some way, without argument or demon- 
stration, men caught the contagion of his faith. Apparently 
without effort or design he so introduced men to God, not 
by way of information but personal acquaintance, that ever 
after he becomes the supreme reality of their lives. 

Men not only through him entered into a new experience, 
but they discovered in his life a deeper interpretation of the 
character of God. God is not a word to be defined but a 
reality that can be known only in experience. We cannot 
imagine a man defining his wife. Nor can we conceive of 
Jesus defining God as in the creeds, “immaterial substance, 
infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, 
holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” Instead “as the track- 
ing out of a concrete life, a Man, from Nazareth to Calvary, 
made of Christianity a veritable human revelation of God.” 


“Christ, 
Who in a human life, a human heart, 
Didst show the world, and showest still the world, 
The very heart and life of God himself.” 


“We praise thee this day 
For the music and laughter and joy 
Of thine own eternal life: 
For the heart overflowing with gladness 
Because it has thee: 
For the zest and delight of the humblest life lived on earth 
That is kindled aflame with the friendship of God.”? 


God could not be contained in words but the world had 
waited for a human life that could reveal him, for a good- 


* Hoyland, “The Fourfold Sacrament,” p. 115. 


124 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


will that without’ reserve could suffer all for the common 
good; for a human heart that could love its enemies and 
show Love incarnate. Henceforth, unless a human life had 
utterly surpassed the divine, men had to enlarge their defi- 
nition of God to include at least all that Jesus was. They 
believed they had looked upon “the portrait of the invisible 
God.” They conceived that in some way “Jesus was God 
here; and God is Jesus everywhere,” that the spirit that was 
manifest in him is the spirit that is at the heart of the 
universe." 7 

The recognition of God in man has solved the ultimate 
problems of life for many as for Browning, 


“T say the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 

All questions in this world and out of it, 
And has, so far, advanced thee to be wise.” 


Once at least a man lived a whole life in the light of his 
faith in God. While he does not evade the sterner realities 
of life, he eliminates from the conception of God all that is 
not ethical. He attributes to him all that human judgment 
can approve as all-good, the eternal Goodness that embodies 
the supreme ideal, yet who comes into the closest relations 
with men. Men are to aim to be perfect, even as their Father 
in heaven is perfect. 

The whole significance of his life was God. He first came 
into Galilee proclaiming “the good news of God.” And this 
experience of spiritual discovery through him did not cease 
with his death. For some reason it was greatly augmented 
after it. Paul, who had never seen him, entered into a fuller 


*If God must include all that is best in man, including Jesus, then 
he cannot be less than personal. Thus Lotze points out that “perfect 
Personality is in God only. To all finite minds there is allotted but 
a pale copy thereof; the finiteness of the finite is not a producing 
condition of this Personality but a limit and hindrance of its de- 
velopment.” Professor Borden P. Bowne comes to the same con- 
clusion in his Theism: “On all these accounts we regard the 
objections to the personality of the world-ground as resting on a 
very superficial psychology. Proper personality is possible only 
to the Absolute.” 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 125 


experience of God than any of the twelve that were with 
him during his life time. Centuries later Francis of Assissi 
catches more of his spirit than any of his disciples up to the 
time of his death. Separation in time and space proved no 
barrier to the discovery of God, who is as accessible today 
as in the time of Jesus. 

Quite apart from any theory, the simple human record of 
his life and teaching has proved the means of introducing 
men in every age to the secret of the discovery of God for 
themselves. Jesus himself “lived and had his being in the 
sacred Scriptures.” As recorded in the first gospel alone 
some fifty-eight times he quotes from seventeen different 
books in the Old Testament. These were the fresh springs 
from which he drank. And with all the added wealth of his 
own life and teaching we may enter into the enlarged con- 
ception of the Source of all life, as “the God and Father of 
Jesus Christ” in the New Testament." 

Let us take any typical passage in the record. “Anyone 
who drinks this water will be thirsty again but anyone who 
drinks the water I shall give him will never thirst any more; 
the water I shall give him will turn into a spring of water 
welling up to eternal life.’? One may read such a passage 
as mere words upon a printed page, or he may subject them 
to the exhaustive study of historical criticism, or to theo- 
logical speculation as to some theory of the person who 
uttered them, without any spiritual result whatever. On the 
other hand by an experiment he may himself enter into the 
discovery of God. It was in November, 1897, that the 


*Mr. C. A. Beckwith points out some of the reasons for the 
necessity of a new discovery of God in our own day. There is need 
of a restatement of our idea of God in the light of the changed 
views in all departments of human interest. We must take into 
account the new scientific spirit, the new psychology, the new view 
of the Bible, and the modern conception of authority. We face a 
new world view in the light of evolutionary development. There 
has been an advance from a static to a dynamic conception of reality; 
we are in a living universe in process of becoming. The new social 
emphasis in religion also necessitates a redefinition of God. Finally 
we must redefine God in terms of our understanding of Jesus Christ. 
See “The Idea of God,” pp. 5-36. 

? John 4:14. Moffatt’s translation. 


126 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


above passage became the means of spiritual discovery for 
the writer such that, for him, God became forever the central 
reality of all life. During all the years since, the simple 
record of the New Testament in which these words are 
found, coupled with prayer, has proved the chief means for 
the deepening and enlarging of this experience of God. The 
admonition to Augustine in the fifth century, “Take and 
read,” has proved for multitudes the means by which they 
have found this satisfying experience of God of which he 
speaks, “Thou hast made us for Thyself; and the heart is 
restless till it rests in Thee.” 

Here in the heart of religion and the progressive choice 
of the moral will is the only pragmatic solution of the prob- 
lem of evil. It is the unsolved problem of our common 
humanity. Men have asked for twenty-two centuries, since 
Epicurus: does the failure lie in the fact that God would 
prevent evil but cannot, or that he can prevent it but will not? 
We would reply that in our judgment the trend of events in- 
dicates, not that he cannot or will not, but that God IS over- 
coming evil through the cooperation of man’s moral education. 

If physical evil is only the raw stuff of which character is 
made, and the world as Keats held is not a vale of tears 
but “the vale of soul-making”; if the only ultimate evil 
springs from man’s moral will, then the solution must be 
found there. If evil is the fragmentary, the morally incom- 
plete, its solution will only be found in man’s moral effort. 
Men have ever felt that there is a contradiction between the 
natural and the mora! order, between the actual and the ideal, 
between what is and what ought to be. The gulf is bridged 
and the contradiction is solved only in a free will choosing 
the good. The missing link is supplied when a human will 
cooperates with the divine will which is working out a moral 
purpose in a developing world. Evil cannot be explained 
away but it can be done away, in the overcoming of evil by 
good.* 

*The problem of evil is dealt with at length in the author’s 
“Suffering and the War,” pp. 1-90, which will be sent free upon 


application to any one seriously troubled by this question. Address 
347 Madison Ave., New York City. 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 127 
5. The Discovery of God in Personal Experience 


The Kingdom of God is within. Here if anywhere God 
must be found. Though the world be flooded with light, 
none can reach the individual save through his own eye. 
Though the wide universe be full of good, none can come 
to him save by his own inward response. 

First and foremost all depends upon an inward attitude. 
It is not the great in intellect but the pure in heart who see 
God, not by way of arbitrary reward but by the working of 
an inevitable psychological law. Obedience becomes the 
organ of knowledge and inward response the condition of 
expanding experience. We are here at the crux of the whole 
question of the discovery of God. It lies in the moral pre- 
requisite of faith. Jesus used this method of appeal to 
experience. To him life was a unity grounded in the moral 
will. “If any man willeth to do, he shall know,” 

We may choose to “tune in” our radio to the cheapest 
jazz, or we may adjust the wave lengths of our spiritual life 
to the higher harmonies. We shall find that life is flooded 
with the true and the good and the beautiful for those who 
are in tune with the spiritual. We make our own world. 
By our moral response we may discover God and live and 
move and have our being in a spiritual universe. Or we may 
seek to live by bread alone, in a world of materialistic 
mechanism. The whole direction of our life will spring 
from our moral choice. If, upon our hypothesis, there is a 
God at all, a God adequate to the needs of the world and 
capable of responding to them, then the very universe is a 
fabric woven with purpose. If we weave our woof through 
the warp of God’s will, we shall achieve patterns of 
undreamed beauty and harmony. 

If there be a God at all we can live fully only as we share 
his purposes. If God is a working God we shall discover 
him as we seek to be fellow workers with him in his tasks. 
If he is not real to us we shall probably find it is due not to 
incorrect thinking but to unreal living. 

If, paralyzed by doubt, one cannot take the next step in 


128 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


belief, let him take it in action. Let him act as if there were 
a God and see the result. Faith, as Donald Hankey believed, 
is betting your life that there is a God. It is taking a chance 
upon your belief and backing that hazard by action. In the 
midst of doubt many a man has found God by undertaking 
a task that lay beyond his own strength. If we do the duty 
that lies nearest to us, in so doing we may unconsciously be 
doing the will of God. If any man will do he shall know. 
If there be a loving God what kind of service would he desire 
for suffering humanity? In undertaking such service we 
may be meeting God half way by the doing of his will. 
Ideally, work may be a sacrament in which we share in the 
free creative activity of God, as we become fellow-workers 
with him in the service of our fellow men. In such service 
we may discover God, as did Firdusi the Persian poet, 


“No one could tell me what my soul might be. 
I searched for God, and God eluded me. 
I sought my brother out, and found all three— 
My soul, my God, and all humanity.” 


We come now to the final answer to our three pairs of 
alternatives—either there is or there is not a God; either 
God is personal or impersonal; either the attitude of the indi- 
vidual will be characterized by the will to believe or the will 
to disbelieve. Since there is no absolute proof or disproof, 
though much evidence in support of the positive hypothesis 
of hope, since complete indifference or neutrality is impos- 
sible, since multitudes of men testify that they have fulfilled 
the conditions and found God in experience, are we ourselves 
willing to make the experiment ? 

Dr. L. P. Jacks in his “Religious Perplexities” helps us in 
solving our doubts by his bold grappling with the problem 
of evil and his frank admission of the seriousness of our 
difficulties. He writes in substance as follows: As Carlyle 
was never tired of repeating, the ultimate question which 
every man has to face and answer for himself is this: “Wilt 
thou be a hero or a coward?” There is a coward and a hero 
in the breast of every man. Religion is a power which 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 129 


develops the hero in the man at the expense of the coward. 
Thenceforward the man’s reason becomes the organ of the 
new spirit that is in him, no longer fettered to the self-center. 
Faith is nothing else than reason grown courageous—reason 
raised to its highest power, expanded to its widest vision. 

There is such a thing as the will-to-disbelieve. It is im- 
pervious to all appeals. We can find grounds for doubting 
our own identity, for doubting the multiplication table, for 
doubting the fundamental axioms of thought—if we are 
determined to find them. However sceptically inclined a 
man may be, there comes a point where he suspends his will- 
to-disbelieve in favor of the proposition that Truth (and 
perhaps Beauty and Goodness also) is better than the. 
opposite. He is not dismayed at finding himself in a universe 
which puts him under no compulsion to believe in God, Free- 
dom, Duty and Immortality. He finds his own nature as 
hero exquisitely adapted to the nature of the universe as 
dangerous—on that side the ringing challenge, on this the 
joyous response; man and the universe engaged together as 
loyal confederates in the task of creating a better-than-what- 
is. On the surface of things there is discord, confusion and 
want of adaptation; but dig down, first to the center of the 
world, and then to the center of your own nature, and you 
will find a most wonderful correspondence, a most beautiful 
harmony, between the two—the world made for the hero 
and the hero made for the world. The only final mode of 
ascertaining whether or not such a God exists is by experi- 
ment, standing or falling by the issue, and resorting to the 
methods of argumentation only to confirm or elucidate the 
results so obtained. Christianity began in something that 
happened, in a deed that was done, in a life that was lived. 
Thus Mr. Jacks points the way to a practical solution of our 
difficulties. It is found not in a way of thought, but in a way 
of life. 

The libertine or the drunkard cannot appreciate Bach, or 
Raphael, or Jesus, or the character of a pure woman. He 
does not have the moral prerequisite of faith, The man who 
does not humbly obey the physical laws of the universe will 


130 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


not discover the secrets of science. And he who does not 
make the earnest response of the moral will, will not find 
the spiritual reality of life in the total harmony of the true, 
the good and the beautiful which is God. 

All about us men are failing not merely for lack of clear 
thinking but for lack of right living. Men are not enough 
in tune with the spiritual to discover it; they are not pure 
enough in heart to see God; they are not enough morally in 
earnest to find him. The root cause is the maladjustment of 
the moral will to the will of God. 

Faith in God then, is not an invitation merely intellec- 
tually to believe; nor is it a sentimental affirmation. It is 
a moral challenge, a challenge to be done once and for all 
with petty shams and selfishness, a challenge to see life as a 
struggle and to resolve to spend and be spent in it, a struggle 
that men and women and little children may have life and 
that the will of God may be done on earth. To those who 
accept the challenge God increasingly reveals himself. But 
we must take time to stay persistently in the presence of the 
best. As Dean Inge shows, if we spend sixteen hours a day 
with things and not five minutes in the presence of the 
spiritual, things will seem two hundred times more real than 
God. But the door is ever open, and he who seeks shall find. 

Let us seek God in nature and we shall find him there— 
not merely things, or matter or mechanism, but the God 
whom all nature reveals. Let us seek him in man. For if 
at the center of the universe there is this principle of love, 
then only those who look with the eyes of love will see the 
truth of things, and will see him at work in his world. To 
have faith in God will mean to have faith in men, to look at 
men and women as he does—the poor and the prodigal, our 
neighbor and the foreigner. Only as we discover God in 
man shall we find the Father of whom they are children. 
Let us seek him in the inner values of life in whatsoever 
things are true, whatsoever things are good, whatsoever 
things are lovely and of good report. We shall find the 
source and sum and end of all the values united in a God 
who is Love, Let us seek him as he has spoken in times 


A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 131 


past through the prophets and men of spiritual genius. But 
especially, if we may judge by results, we may discover him 
in Jesus and in following his way of life. To spend an hour, 
or any serious portion of it, each day in the presence of 
Jesus as his life and teaching are revealed in the records; 
to fasten on the mind and heart each day the spirit, the ideal, 
that was realized in him and then daily morally to respond 
to the fresh discovery of new truth, will be to find—God 
himself. 

Finally in our own hearts, if they be pure, if they be 
humble, if they hunger and thirst for God, we shall find him 
within. The words of Plotinus are still true for every one 
of us: “Yonder is the true object of our love, which it is 
possible to grasp and to live with and truly to possess, since 
no envelope of flesh separates us from it. He who has seen 
it knows what I say, that the soul then has another life, when 
it comes to God, and having come possesses him, and knows 
when in that state that it is in the presence of the dispenser 
of true life and that it needs nothing further.” 

“Where,” says Jacob Boehme, “will you seek for God? 
Seek him in your soul, which has proceeded out of the 
Eternal Nature, the living fountain of forces wherein the 
Divine working stands.” For our age, as for every age, 
the supreme question of life is that of such spiritual dis- 
covery. For those who are as yet strangers to him, and for 
those who already know him in part, our life-long quest must 
be an ever fresh and deepening discovery of God. 


*Quoted by E. Underhill, “The Life of the Spirit and the Life 
of Today,” pp. 2, 3. 


Cuaptrer IV 
THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 
A PROGRESSIVE REVELATION 


By the new view of the Bible we mean simply the position 
held by the consensus of modern scholarship after a century 
of painstaking research. The word “Bible” in its Greek 
original meant simply “The Books,” a collection of many 
separate rolls of the gathered writings of the Old and New 
Covenants. The Koran claims to be the immediate word 
of God, he himself being prevailingly represented as the 
speaker, “sending down” from a great archetypal book in 
heaven, in one fixed, final and authoritative deliverance, his 
complete revelation upon religion, law, politics and all life, 
sacred and secular. The Bible, on the other hand, is a 
library of sacred literature of sixty-six books, or rolls, writ- 
ten by some two score of widely differing authors, who wrote 
during more than a thousand years of Jewish history, in 
far-separated localities and differing schools of thought. It 
is the most human book in the world; for it was lived before 
it was written. It contains snatches of early songs and 
sayings, primitive cosmogony and folklore, prose and poetry, 
history and law, psalms and proverbs. But widely scattered 
as are these writings, representing divergent ideas and dif- 
ferent moral levels, one increasing spiritual purpose seems 
to be discoverable throughout. We soon observe evidences 
of a principle of gradual, progressive revelation, correspond- 
ing to the slow education of the race. Some might have 
imagined that the Bible should have been dictated by God 
in complete uniformity at one level of inspiration. Such a 
book, however, would have been unintelligible to primitive 
man. But if, without any preconceived theories, we simply 
examine the Bible itself, it immediately becomes evident 
that, although there are occasional reversions, on the whole 
there is progress, almost as from darkness to light, or from 

132 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 133 


faint dawn to the full blaze of noonday, as we pass from 
the low moral levels of primitive times to the spiritual heights 
of the New Testament. 

If anyone doubts this progressive element let him turn 
first to such a passage as the last three chapters of Judges, 
with its polygamy, concubinage, adultery, sodomy, violation, 
superstitition, the slaughter of men, women and children, 
savage destruction and revenge. Then compare Jesus’ teach- 
ing, let us say, in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, where God 
as Father seeks each child as does the shepherd his lost 
sheep, and receives him as a father his prodigal son. Under 
the legal conception of God in the Old Testament he is 
represented as demanding the immediate death by stoning 
of a poor man who gathered a few sticks on the Sabbath 
day. When the Pharisees, under the same legal scriptural 
conception, objected to the disciples plucking a few grains 
of wheat, Jesus replied, “The Sabbath was made for man, 
and not man for the Sabbath.’ Is it a different God who 
is speaking, in one passage as a bloodthirsty Moloch-like 
legal taskmaster, and in the other the God and Father of 
Jesus? Or is there a fuller realization of truth by progres- 
sive revelation, from an imperfect to a more perfect concep- 
tion of the same God? What the earlier priests enjoin the 
later prophets condemn. Can the Bible be understood with- 
out the key of progressive revelation? The failure to possess 
this key has led to the justification on the authority of Scrip- 
ture of some of the most savage, pagan and cruel practices’ 
of history; from polygamy, slavery, witchcraft and the inqui- 
sition of former times, to the justification of war in our own 
day. 

The Bible contains the record of the world’s greatest relig- 
ious race in its discovery of God, and is practically our one 
source of the knowledge of Jesus, The rediscovery of the 
religion of Jesus is one of the deepest needs of our day. 


*Numbers 15:32-36; Mark 2:23-24, 27-28. See E. E. Slosson, 
“Sermons of a Chemist,’ p. 60. Compare 2 Kings 2:23-24 with 
Luke 23:34. In the one little children are cursed and slain by an 
angry God, in the other Jesus cries, “Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do.” See Psalm 109:9-12 and Matt. 5:44, 


134 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Jesus was able so to share his experience of God with a 
little group of disciples that they became men who soon 
“turned the world upside down.” After he was put to death 
his followers seemed suddenly to share his life in greater 
fullness. They began to introduce men to this experience of 
God, instructing them verbally concerning Jesus as Messiah. 
Following his brief ministry and tragic death, in the over- 
whelming experience of this new life, informally Peter had 
stood up to explain it. The expansion of the explanation 
there begun was continued in the writings of the New Testa- 
ment. As Peter, James, John and others, one by one were 
removed by death, and as the number of the new converts 
multiplied so rapidly that it was difficult to instruct them, 
the need became imperative to commit the oral tradition to 
writing so that it could be shared with the widening circles 
of the followers of Jesus in cities like Antioch, Ephesus 
and Rome. 


The Letters of Paul 


First of all, Paul began to write letters to correct, instruct 
and encourage his converts that they might more fully share 
this new experience. When he wrote his first letter to his 
converts in Thessalonica, about 50 A. D., it was already 
two decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, but some twenty 
years before the first gospel was written. Jesus had been 
crucified about 30 A. D., or the year previous, and Paul’s 
conversion had taken place shortly afterward. Twenty long 
years had passed in the ripening of his character and message 
before he wrote his first letter. 

Paul had just visited Thessalonica during his first months 
in Europe. His successful work in winning converts had so 
aroused the Jews that he had to leave the city to prevent 
violence and was never able to return. While working at 
Corinth, near by, he writes to these converts a friendly 
informal letter, right out of his heart, to strengthen and 
encourage them and answer their doubts and difficulties. A 
second letter soon followed when he heard that some had 
misunderstood the first letter, thinking that the Day of the 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 135 


Lord had already come. These two short letters, with the 
Epistle to the Galatians, were the first beginnings of Chris- 
tian literature. Paul no more thought of writing “Scripture” 
than do we when we write to our friends. 

When he hears that the Judaizers had appeared in his rear, 
upset his Gentile converts in Galatia and tried to induce 
them to keep the Jewish Law, upon the alleged authority 
of some of the apostles in Jerusalem, Paul writes, white-hot, 
his great defense of liberty to the Galatians. He shows that 
the essence of the good news of Christianity is righteousness 
only by faith in Christ, and complete release from the 
orthodoxy of the majority who were still in legal bondage 
to the Jewish Law. In the decade between 50 and 60 A. D, 
the bulk of Paul’s letters were written to meet the temporary 
needs and special circumstances of his converts and the 
churches from Thessalonica to Rome. But such was the 
man and such were his messages that they have proved the: 
greatest letters ever written. They so live that if you tear 
them they almost bleed. Though we are separated by cen= 
turies and continents, they so live that to this day they 
quicken the same life that was in Jesus, in Paul, and in the 
disciples of Corinth or Ephesus. Before he had finished 
his letters he had written a quarter of the writings which 
several centuries later were gathered together in the New 
Testament. The epistles of Paul constitute practically a 
gospel, and that, not the fifth, but the first gospel. Indeed, 
evangelical, orthodox Christianity is drawn more from Paul 
than from any of the four gospels, for he is its chief 
interpreter. 


The Gospels 


Four historic events are the focal points of the writings 
of the New Testament. The epistles of Paul arise out of 
the missionary evangelization of the Gentile world about 
32-62 A. D.; the early gospels follow the fall of Jerusalem in 
70 A. D.; the Apocalypse and certain epistles are occasioned 
by the sufferings under the persecution of Domitian, 81-96 
A. D.; other writings answer the rise of the early sects and 


136 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


heresies.1 The premier place in the New Testament is 
given to the gospels. The word means the “good news” of 
the Christian message. These gospels were of relatively 
late origin, as there was no early occasion for them. While 
the original apostles as authorities were still living and the 
early Church was waiting in daily expectation of the early, 
visible advent of the Messiah, there was no occasion to write 
a history which would be blotted out by this expected con- 
summation, The early disciples were Jews whose tradition 
had always treasured the words of each great teacher, but 
had recorded no life of any prophet, being as indifferent to 
biographical interest as was Paul. Fortunately for us, both 
Greeks and Romans were deeply interested in biography. 
With the fall of Jerusalem the base of Christianity shifted 
from its first Jewish center to Rome, the great capital of 
the Gentile world, to which all roads led and from which 
they radiated. 

With the early death of James, Peter, and other eye 
witnesses, the church of Rome perhaps demanded some 
authoritative record of the Master’s life, as Clement of 
Alexandria suggests.2, Some believe that Mark was writ- 
ten first in Aramaic and later translated for the Roman 
Church. Mark had not only been a companion of Paul and 
Barnabas, but the friend and perhaps the Greek interpreter 
of the Aramaic-speaking apostle, Peter, and had possibly 
himself seen the Lord.* This first gospel seems to be 
based for the most part on Mark’s draft of Peter’s reminis- 
cences. It is written in rugged, vivid Greek, often colloquial 
and crude, not in the Jewish, Biblical style of Matthew, nor 
with the literary art of Luke. 

Luke’s primary preface throws light on the origin of the 
gospels. Notice the three periods of development from 
the apostles or “the original eye-witnesses,” the “many” 
later writers like Mark, and finally Luke as an “historian.” 
“Many writers have undertaken to compose accounts of the 


* Goodspeed, “The Story of the New. Testament,” p. 8. 
2 Streeter, “The Four Gospels,” pp. 496-497. 
® Acts 13:13, 15; 37-40, Mark 14:51. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 137 


movement which has developed among us, just as the original 
eye-witnesses who became teachers of the message have 
handed it down to us. For that reason, Theophilus, and 
because I have investigated it all carefully from the begin- 
ning, I have determined to write a connected account of it 
for Your Excellency, so that you may be reliably informed 
about the things you have been taught.”? 

Three strata seem to be observable in this statement: 
1. The apostles, who delivered the oral tradition. According 
to Dr. Moffat, Luke’s statement seems to imply that none 
of the written narratives were drawn up by original eye- 
witnesses. 2. “Many” who had later written this tradition 
of the words or life of Jesus for the members of this growing 
movement. 3. Luke, as an historian or evangelist dealing 
with these written documents, and probably with living 
witnesses whom he had come in touch with at Jerusalem, 
Caesarea and Antioch, writes them down in “a connected 
account” in historical form. Finally. instead of the original 
witnesses independently writing down from memory, we 
have four gospels, each based on other written documents, 
recording the tradition of the earlier eye-witnesses and often 
borrowing or quoting freely from one another. 

According to B. H. Streeter of Oxford, “A variety of 
considerations suggest that originally the gospels were local 
gospels circulated separately, and authoritative only in certain 
areas. The tradition which assigns Mark to Rome, and 
John to Ephesus may safely be accepted. That connecting 
Luke with Greece and Matthew with Palestine is perhaps 
no more than conjecture; Matthew may with greater proba- 
bility be connected with Antioch,’”? 


1 Goodspeed’s Translation of Luke 1:14. 
' ?“The Four Gospels,” pp. 1-9. Streeter quotes Irenaeus, bishop 
of Lyons, c. 185 A. D., showing the later tradition when all the 
church had adopted the four gospels. “Matthew published his 
written gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while 
Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the church of Rome. 
After their decease Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also 
transmitted to us im writing those things which Peter had preached; 
and Luke, the attendant of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel which 
Paul had declared. Afterward, John, the disciple of the Lord, who 


138 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 
The First Gospel 


There is general agreement and close interdependence 
among the first three “synoptic” gospels. A century of 
indefatigable scholarship has resulted in the consensus of 
opinion that Mark is the original and basic gospel of the 
three. Matthew reproduces nine-tenths of the subject matter 
of Mark in almost identical language; and Luke copies more 
than half of Mark. While Matthew and Luke differ in their 
opening and closing accounts of the life of Jesus, the moment 
they come to Mark’s material they follow his gospel closely, 
using the majority of his actual words. Mark’s original 
arrangement is often topical rather than historical, sayings 
and incidents being grouped by similarity of subject matter 
rather than by chronological sequence; yet the relative order 
of incidents and sections in Mark is in general closely fol- 
lowed both by Matthew and Luke. Mark’s roughness of 
style and grammar and his preservation of early original 
Aramaic words are omitted and many of his blunt phrases 
likely to give offense are frequently toned down or left out.* 

Mark preserves for us many priceless details which are 


also reclined on his bosom, published the gospel while residing at 
Ephesus in Asia . . . It is impossible that the gospels should be 
in number either more or fewer than these. For since there are 
four regions of the worid wherein we are, and four principal 
winds . . . it is natural that it should have four pillars.” 

1 Streeter, “The Four Gospels,’ pp. 151-161. Mark contains 661 
verses; Matthew reproduces the substance of 600 of these. Mark’s 
style is diffuse, Matthew’s is succinct. Matthew employs fifty-one 
per cent of the actual words used by Mark and Luke fifty-three 
per cent. Matthew omits only ten per cent of the subject matter 
of Mark, while Luke omits forty-five per cent. Thus Matthew 
24:15, 16 is copied almost word for word from Mark 13:14, includ- 
ing the original author’s comment, “Let him that readeth understand.” 
The words attributed to Jesus, “Let him that readeth understand,” 
seem to indicate the employment of a document by both writers, as 
Jesus would have said, “Let him that heareth understand.” “Mark 
reads like a shorthand account of a story by an impromptu speaker— 
with all the repetition, redundancies, and digressions of living speech. 
And it seems to me most probable that his gospel, like Paul’s epistles, 
was taken down from rapid dictation by word of mouth. Matthew 
and Luke use the more succinct and carefully chosen language of one 
who writes and then revises an article for publication.” “The Four 
Gospels,” p. 163. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 139 


of the utmost interest to us today, but which were omitted 
by the other gospels as uninteresting to the church of that 
time. The gospels were written probably in this order: 
Mark, Luke, Matthew, John; but in the western church they 
were published in the official order of Matthew, John, Luke, 
Mark, placing what was in their eyes the least important 
last. Practically all scholars now give the first place histori- 
cally to Mark, as giving us the most vivid and most accurate 
picture of the life of Christ.t 

According to Moffatt, Mark’s gospel was written just 
after the destruction of Jerusalem in 7/0 A. D., while Streeter 
would place it just before that date.? Mark is concerned 
with the deeds of Jesus rather than with his words. Like 
Paul, he conceives the gospel to be attachment to the person 
of Jesus rather than the good news of his message. He 
writes with a strong colloquial style, with loose grammatical 
construction and rough phraseology. With vivid circum- 
stantial imagination and many “extra-touches’ which mark 
impressions of an eye-witness, his descriptions are often 
very detailed with repetitions, duplicate sayings and collo- 
quialisms which Matthew and Luke omit. According to 
Mark, Jesus is a preacher and healer, proclaiming the good 
news of the Kingdom of God. There is a frank recognition 
of Jesus’ human limitations and frequent reference to his 
miracles of healing and his power over evil spirits. Mark 

*Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia during the first half of 
the second century, tries to defend Mark against criticism in his day 
as follows, “This also the presbyter said, ‘Mark, who was Peter’s 
interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that 
he recollected of what Christ had said or done. For he was not a 
hearer of the Lord, nor a follower of his; he followed Peter, as I 
have said, at a later date, and Peter adapted his instructions to prac- 
tical needs, without any attempt to give the Lord’s words systematic- 
ally. So that Mark was not wrong in writing down some things 
in this way from memory, for his one concern was neither to omit 
nor to falsify anything he had heard.’ ” 

2 Streeter would date Mark about 65 A. D. and Matthew about 
85. By 90 A. D. Mark and Luke are known in Rome; after 119 
the three synoptics; from 170 A. D. all four gospels. Thirty-five or 
forty years elapsed after the crucifixion before this first life of 
Christ was written. Carried out from Rome and shared with other 


churches, Mark’s gospel was the first and most widely circulated of 
the four and most influenced the later gospels. 


140 . NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


evidently writes for an audience outside Palestine, such as 
would be found in Rome, with explanations of Jewish 
customs, phrases and names unfamiliar to Gentiles.? 

The only discourse of Jesus which Mark records at length 
is that concerning the “last things’? in Chapter 13. Most 
scholars agree that he is here quoting from a written source 
or “Little Apocalypse,” consisting of a mixture of early 
Christian expectations of the end of the age and genuine 
utterances of Jesus himself. The gospel ends abruptly at 
16:8. Moffatt’s translation records two attempts to com- 
plete the unfinished gospel, one of which we have in our 
Authorized Version. 

If the gospels are read in any harmony, it will almost 
invariably be found that when three accounts occur in parallel 
columns, Matthew and Luke have closely followed and 
copied Mark. Where Matthew and Luke only appear in 
parallel columns, it will be found that in some two hundred 
verses they are in close verbal agreement, and scholars are 
now generally agreed that they are both copying a common 
written source of the sayings of Jesus, now lost to us. This 
source was formerly called the “Logia,” or the “Double 
Tradition,” or the “Second Source.” It is now usually 
referred to as Q, from the German Quelle, meaning source. 

“Q” was evidently very ancient, consisting of one or more 
collections of the sayings of Jesus, probably gathered 
together during the decade 50-60 A. D. while Paul was 
writing his epistles, and some time before the gospel of 
Mark was written. It consists of the important sayings of 
Jesus, with an occasional narrative to introduce the teaching.? 


*Mark 3:17, 5:41, 7:3-4, 34, 10:46, 15:42, etc. 

? According to Dr. Moffatt the document Q includes an account 
of the baptism of John, the temptation, the sermon on the mount, 
the healing of the centurion’s servant, John’s message to Jesus, a 
group of parables and the seven woes to the Pharisees, etc., as 
follows, Matt. 3:7-12; 4:3-11; 5:3-12, 13-17, 20-24, 25-30, 31-48; 
6:1f£; 7:1-12, 15-23, 24-27; 8:5-13, 19-22; 9:13a; 10:54, 17-38; 
11:2-19, 20-30; 12:5-8, 11-13, 25-45; 13:14-15, 16-17, 24-29, 33-35, 
36-43, 44-52; 15:12-14, 23-24; 16:17-19; 17:19-20; 18:3-5, 10, 
12-14, 15-20, 23-35; 19:6-12, 28; 20:1-16; 21:14-17, 31b-32, 28-3la; 
22:1-10, 11-14; 23:1-39; 24:10-12, 26-27, 37-41, 42-44, 45-51; 
25 :1-30; 26 252-54. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 141 


Thus there were two principal written sources for Matthew 
and Luke, the lost collections of the sayings of Jesus care- 
fully reproduced in both Matthew and Luke, and the acts 
of Jesus recorded in the gospel of Mark. Matthew appar- 
ently had a document not used by Luke, consisting chiefly 
of discourse material, including the long discourse on the 
parables, the Kingdom, and material concerning the “last 
things.” Luke also, in addition to Mark and Q, had separate 
sources written and oral. 


Matthew's Gospel 


A close study of the book of Matthew as we have it today 
reveals the fact that it is an anonymous gospel, written in 
Greek, based upon earlier documents. These documents 
include Mark, its basis for the life of Christ, QO, or the 
collected sayings of Jesus used by both Matthew and Luke, 
and a third source to which Luke did not apparently have 
access. Papias, c. 140-160 A. D., writes, “So then Matthew 
composed the Logia (sayings) in the Hebrew language, and 
everyone interpreted (or translated) them as he was able.” 
In Papias’ day there were apparently already various Greek 
versions of Matthew’s collection of the sayings of Jesus in 
Aramaic. If the writer of our first gospel incorporated an 
Aramaic document of the sayings of Jesus by Matthew, it 
would account for the attachment of his name to the gospel 
by a later tradition. The writer’s effort to give prominence 
to Matthew in the gospel* would be natural if he knew that 
the apostle was the author of one of his sources. The fact 


President Burton of the University of Chicago believed there 
were several of these source documents, including a Galilean docu- 
ment describing the early ministry about Capernaum and Nazareth, 
and a later Perean document extending from Luke 9:51 to 18:14, 
and 19:1-28. 

According to Harnack, about one-sixth of Luke and two-elevenths 
of Matthew are drawn from this priceless compilation of the say- 
ings of Jesus. These sayings of Christ were originally written in 
Aramaic and composed in Palestine. During the centuries it is the 
portrait of Jesus as given in these sayings that has remained in the 
foreground of the church’s thought. 

* Matt. 9:9, 10:3, etc. Matthew is the only apostle, besides the two 
pairs of brothers, of whom any incident is recorded. 


142 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


remains that the gospel is anonymous and that the writer 
is at almost every point dependent on Mark for his historical 
material, upon written documents for the sayings of Jesus, 
and has access to little oral tradition. Professor Burkitt of 
Cambridge says, “The gospel according to Matthew is a 
fresh edition of Mark, revised, rearranged and enriched 
with new material; the gospel according to Luke is a new 
historical book, made by combining parts of Mark with parts 
derived from other documents.” Professor Streeter of | 
Oxford believes the gospel of Matthew was written for some 
important local church, probably Antioch, not later than 
SouAr Dd, 

Jerusalem, which fell on September 4, 70 A. D., had been 
destroyed some time before,” yet the early expected end of 
the world had not come. The writer of this gospel saw the 
Jewish nation rejecting its Messiah while the Gentiles 
throughout the Roman world were rapidly accepting him. 
Which was right, the Jew or the Christian? The gospel was 
not failing, but the Jewish capital of Jerusalem had fallen, 
making the keeping of the ceremonial law of the temple 
now impossible. The writer sees here a sign and a message 
to the Jewish nation. He is a loyal Jewish Christian who 
believes in the law and the prophets and has accepted Jesus 
as their fulfillment. The book of Matthew as we now 
have it stands out in “massive unity” and unfolds, from the 
Jewish standpoint, the life of Jesus with consummate literary 
power. Jesus is conceived as the Messiah of his people, 
trained under the Jewish Law, yet already the head of a 
world-wide church which transcends legal Judaism. He is 
“greater than the temple,” the giver of a new Law, which 
transcends the old. Matthew combines Jewish particular- 
istic exclusiveness with a wider catholic outlook. He writes 
an apology or defense of Christianity and an interpretation 
of early Christian history. It is a manual of Christian 
instruction. It is a biography with a purpose, a life of the 


1 Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI, p. 338. 
* Matt. 22:6-7. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 143 


Jewish Messiah, the first formal book of Christian literature, 
“the first historic apology for universal Christianity.” 
While Mark writes for Roman Gentiles, this writer, whom 
we shall call “Matthew” by tradition, sees Jesus descended 
from the Jewish Abraham, of David’s line, proclaimed Mes- 
siah at his baptism. In five great sermons, inserted in 
Mark’s historical material, the Messiah sets forth the aspects 
of the Kingdom of Heaven. The law and the prophets, 
represented by Moses and Eli ah, testify as to the importance 
of his coming death. It is only in Matthew’s account that 
Christ is “not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel,” and who bids his disciples “go not into the way of the 
Gentiles.” But the Kingdom will be taken away from the 
Jews because of their rejection of Christ, and given to the 
Gentiles.1_ Matthew’s gospel is filled with Jewish quotations, 
often from the Hebrew or Aramaic version. The writer, 
like James, conceives Christianity as the new law and his 
aim is to teach men to “observe all things whatsoever Jesus 
commanded.” His point of view is that of Peter’s recon- 
ciliation of the extreme Gentile liberty of Paulinism with 
the primitive Jewish Christianity of the original apostles. 
This gospel more than any other emphasizes the apoca- 
lyptic element of the early visible return of Christ within 
the life-time of the men then living. When Jesus referred 
to the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, of which 
there should be left not one stone upon another (which did 
take place in 70 A. D.), our writer copies Mark down to 
and including the question, “When shall these things be?” 
But unlike Mark and Luke he adds, in his overwhelming 
interest in the last things, ‘and what shall be the sign of thy 
coming and of the end of the world?’ He is now in diffi- 
culties when he says, “This generation shall not pass away 
till all these things be accomplished”; “There be some of 
them that stand here which shall in no wise taste death, till 
they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom”; and “Ye 


1 Matt. 21:43, 10:5 15:24. 


144 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


shall not have gone through the cities of Israel (on this 
preaching tour) till the Son of Man be come.”* 

The gospel of Matthew, with a prologue and epilogue, 
falls naturally into five portions, each containing narrative 
and discourse material. Each of these five portions ends 
with the rubric or refrain, “And it came to pass when Jesus 
had ended . . .” etc.?. The writer is apparently a Jewish 
Christian who brings out of his treasure “things new,” which 
he has found in Christianity, and “things old” from his 
earlier experience of Judaism (13:52). Mark is the main 
narrative source of the writer, and he treats this document 
with veneration, yet with freedom. 

Mr. H. B. Sharman describes the literary principles of 
Matthew.?® 


“t, Within those narrative portions of his documents where 
chronological or geographical data were absent or were vague, 
to group those events that were related through having a com- 
mon geographical center. 

“2. To combine the several accounts of his documents when 
they seemed to record the same event or discourse, especially 
when the material presented any considerable body of the words 
of Jesus. 

“3. To group the saying of Jesus on a single theme, even to 
the extent of taking one phase of the theme from one document 
and another from another. 

“4. To condense the narratives of Mark where they were 
especially full of secondary details. 


*Cfi. Mark 13:1-4, Matt. 24:3, 34; 10:23, 24:14. Bishop Gore 
says, “There was certainly, I think, a mistake somewhere. St. 
Matthew with his ‘immediately,’ 24:29, must be interpreted as mean- 
ing that the great day would follow the destruction of Jerusalem as 
a separate event without any considerable interval. And, in the 
sense intended, this certainly did not occur .. . Plainly we can- 
not rely upon having the precise words of Christ, and we seem to 
detect contrary tendencies in St. Matthew and St. Luke—in St. 
Matthew to accentuate everything apocalyptic in our Lord’s words, 
and in St. Luke to minimize. . . . ‘Of that day and that hour 
knoweth no one . . . neither the Son, but the Father’ . . . ‘It is 
not for you to know the times or seasons,’ . . . These last two 
sayings mean, I think, unmistakably that our Lord gave no teaching 
at all upon the time of the end. He left it wholly vague and 
indefinite.” ‘Belief in Christ,” pp. 151-154. 

See. 7°28) 11 0s) 133532 19:1) 2620: 

ny B. Sharman, “The Teaching of Jesus About the Future,” 
page 9. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 145 


“c. To change the order of thoughts within a section of one 
document when necessary to the effecting of a junction with 
matter from another document. 

“6. To make the Pharisees the source or the object of such 
unfavorable criticism as the documents leave indefinite in 
source or object. 

“7 To enlarge quotations already made from the Old Testa- 
ment, and to insert additional ones at other points in the history. 

“8. To modify the apparent rigor of hard sayings. 

“9. To eliminate references to anger or other apparently con- 
demnable moods in Jesus.” 

While Mark is more external and is absorbed with the activity 
of Jesus, Matthew is interested chiefly in his sayings. His 
order is frequently topical. 


Luke’s History 


Luke, like Mark, makes no claim of being an eye-witness. 
Writing to Theophilus, probably some Christian official of 
the Roman empire, he endeavors to compile an accurate, 
chronological and orderly account of the life of Jesus. Luke 
as historian is an editor, or compiles from previous sources. 
He writes with literary finish, with wide and versatile 
vocabulary, in fine Hellenistic Greek. He has an eye for 
the dramatic and personal elements. He is catholic and 
cosmopolitan, and has wide sympathy for the Gentiles, for 
women, and for the poor. He often emphasizes both the 
authority and tenderness of Jesus. He gives prominence to 
prayer, to the work of the Holy Spirit, to thanksgiving, to 
the love of Jesus and to the universality of the gospel. 

Matthew apparently arose in the more Jewish and Luke 
in the more Gentile wing of the church. While both usually 
agree when they follow Mark, or when they draw from the 
same “Second Source,” apart from these, as in their accounts 
of the infancy, the passion and the resurrection, they draw 
from different traditions and are divergent in the extreme. 
Apparently Matthew and Luke drew from several of the 
same written sources but neither saw the writing of the other, 
and the cycles of tradition current in the churches where they 
worked seem to have been widely removed from one another. 

Rome seems to have been the church for which the Acts 


146 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


was written. The important history of the Christian move- 
ment in Alexandria is ignored, Antioch is soon dropped, and 
the interest centers in the onward march of Christianity from 
its position as a Jewish sect in Jerusalem to a world religion 
centered in Rome. Luke’s writings may have been intended 
to present Christianity favorably to the Roman officials and 
the Gentile world, as Matthew’s gospel was an apology to the 
Jew. They refuted Nero’s association of Christianity and 
crime and show that Christianity was not a Jewish but a uni- 
versal religion. 

According to Streeter, {ake was apparently written after 
the fall of Jerusalem, as he manifestly modifies Mark’s lan- 
guage to fit this event, probably about 80 A. D., shortly 
before Matthew and the Acts. Luke’s gospel is not anony- 
mous in the sense the other three are, as his preface implies 
that his readers knew his name and his connection with the 
apostles. Streeter concludes, “We thus arrive at the quite 
simple conclusion: the burden of proof is on those who 
would assert the traditional authorship of Matthew and John 
and on those who would deny it in the case of Mark and 
Luke,* 


The Fourth Gospel 


When we pass from the unity of the three synoptic gospels 
to the fourth we have moved into a new world of thought. 
We here face the central and crucial book of the New Testa- 
ment. To be appreciated, the book must be viewed from two 
standpoints, the historic and the religious. A close study of 
its contents reveals the fact that historically at many points it 
stands apparently in contradiction to the first three gospels; 
yet religiously it supplements and completes them and is per- 
haps the greatest religious book ever written. It has been 
to the church in all ages what it was to Clement of Alex- 
andria in the third century, “since bodily things had been 
exhibited in the other gospels, John inspired by the Spirit, 
produced a spiritual gospel’; and to Luther in the sixteenth 


*“The Four Gospels,” p. 562. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 147 


century, “the precious and only gospel, far to be preferred 
above the others.” 

Let us remember that, apparently, the author is not trying 
to write history. He “spiritualizes” or allegorizes it through- 
out. He sees in every outward event a parable with inward 
meaning. Every outward miracle is to him a “sign,” as is 
every word or act of Jesus. Thus he pictures the simple 
surface meaning of a well of water to satisfy physical thirst, 
and a springing fountain of life within the heart to satisfy 
humanity’s need. The same is true of the author’s use of 
light for the blind, bread for the hungry; of birth, marriage, 
life, death, and all other outward physical facts with an 
inward spiritual meaning. The whole gospel is, as it were, 
a parable. The author shows little interest in history as 
such, but much in its philosophic significance and spiritual 
meaning. Huis work should be read not as a prosaic record 
of fact but as a spiritual interpretation. He is the world’s 
great mystic. His work is a manual of devotion. A greater 
than the fisherman son of Zebedee is here. 

It may not be easy for the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon to 
understand his viewpoint, for we are closer in temperament 
to the prosaic Mark. But his appeal to the Orient, the 
mystic, the idealist is immediate. The author is not so 
anxious to record what Jesus did say to the Jews in Galilee, 
as he is to find what he really intended; what he would have 
said to the Gentiles of a later generation in Ephesus, in Asia 
and in Europe. Mark comes nearer to reproducing the 
temporal acts of Jesus, Matthew endeavors to record his 
words, “John” strives for his eternal meaning. He believes 
that Christ himself is speaking “in the Spirit” through him. 
It is he who sees that God is in man, and man in God. More, 
perhaps, than any book in the Bible, this gospel was lived 
before it was written. The writer is concerned not so much 
with a historic woman by a well, who may be a real or a 
symbolic person, but with the eternal fountain of living water 
within, that, through Christ, has quenched his own soul’s 
thirst and is continuing to do so every day in Ephesus. Save 
for the central fact of the incarnation, he is concerned not 


148 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


so much with any temporal incident in time as with eternal 
truth that may be experienced in every age afresh. 

Let us now examine this book from both the historic and 
religious viewpoints. We must remember that it is anony- 
mous; it lays no claim to having been written by an apostle. 
We shall find that its abiding spiritual value is due not to 
its particular date or particular authorship but to its intrinsic 
spiritual truth, its divine inspiration, and its power to enable 
men in every age to find life and find it abundantly. The 
synoptic writers are so close to the events that they some- 
times do not see the wood because of the trees; the fourth 
gospel sees the eternal significance of the life of Jesus in 
perspective.? 

We shall find that historically the first three and the fourth 
gospels could not have been written by the same apostolic 
group. The synoptics are Jewish, John is Greek; the 
synoptics bear the stamp of the first century, John of the 
second; the former are broadly historic, the latter phi- 
losophical and religious. If this statement seems extreme 
and unbelievable let us note the contrasts between the two. 
If the fourth gospel is the true historic picture, what then 
becomes of the other three? On the other hand, if the first 
three are taken as historic, the fourth still remains both 
natural and inestimably valuable, if written in Ephesus by a 
Hellenistic Jew, say between 95 and 110 A. D. 

In the first three gospels Jesus speaks prevailingly of God, 
in the fourth the message is centered in himself. In the first 
three his Messiahship is a secret revealed only to the twelve 
late in his ministry ;? in the fourth it is proclaimed from the 

*Edward Caird in a fine passage says, “It is not that regretful 
memory exaggerates the virtues of the friend who no longer is 
there to refute our idealism with the limitations of mortality. It 
is that the conditions of life half conceal from us what they half 
reveal, and that the immediate perception of all the details of the 
moment obscures the meaning of the whole. And thus it is often 
death that gives the right focus, from which alone each part can be 
seen in its proper proportion and relation to the others.” This is 
the gift to the world of this great writer who completes the work 
of the apostle Paul in this field, to perceive that God was there in 


this truly human life. 
? Mark 8:27-29., 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 149 


beginning and argued with his enemies in almost every 
chapter In the first three he is a real man tempted in all 
points as we are, from the wilderness hunger to the agony in 
the garden. In the fourth these temptations are absent; he 
is a supernatural being who knows all things and needs no 
information from any man.? In the first three gospels the 
miracles are usually works of mercy; in the fourth they are 
“sions” to manifest his glory and prove his divinity. In the 
synoptics he faces the future and his speedy second coming 
on the clouds of heaven; in the fourth he has come already 
by the Spirit into the hearts of his followers after his resur- 
rection and no future coming is portrayed. Here he faces 
not a future coming but the past, saying repeatedly, “I came 
down from heaven”; “before Abraham was I am”; “the 
glory that I had with thee before the world was,” etc., which 
he never says in the synoptics. In the synoptics his whole 
message centers in the Kingdom of God; this is absent in 
the fourth gospel,*? and instead he prevailingly speaks of 
eternal life as a present possession in the heart of the 
individual. 

In the first gospel salvation is a moral process in a life 
of obedience realized in following Jesus, in loving God and 
one’s neighbors, etc. In the fourth men are saved by a 
miraculous new birth, they are born of water and the Spirit 
in baptism; they eat his flesh and blood in the sacrament of 
a later church. Salvation is now conceived as the imparting 
of the divine nature under the Greek conception of God as 
essence or substance, while Jesus is the object of faith lifted 
up like the serpent in the wilderness. This is a Pauline con- 
ception quite different from the Jesus of the synoptics who 
calls men to keep the commandments and come and follow 
him.* 

In the synoptics, save for one or two notable individuals, 
his audience is always and only Jewish; in the fourth gospel 


1 John 4:26; 6:52 to 12:50. 

*John 1:42, 47, 48; 2:24; 4:16, 29, 32; 10:18; 12:27-34; 13:1, etc. 
*Save one or two insignificant references in 3 i ea eae b 36, 

“Mark 10:17-31. Luke 10:25-37. John 3:3-5; 6 53, etc. 


150 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


the writer is thinking of the Greeks of Ephesus, while “the 
Jews” are enemies who had rejected him in distant Palestine. 
Jesus is made to say, “as I spake unto the Jews.”* To whom 
else had he ever spoken? In the synoptics Jesus is a miracle 
of wonder, half understood and variously interpreted, as a 
Son adopted at his baptism; in John he is a parable fully and 
and finally interpreted in terms of the central truth of the 
incarnation. In the former he is prevailingly the “Son of 
Man,” a mystery, a problem to be interpreted—“Whom say 
ye that I am?” In John he is the Greek Logos, the pre- 
existent Son of God who became flesh on earth. In the first 
and third gospels he is miraculously conceived and born of 
the virgin Mary. In the fourth, while he is the very incar- 
nation of God, no virgin birth is mentioned and he is spoken 
of as the “son of Joseph.’ In the first three gospels Jesus 
is busy casting out demons. In the fourth there are none. 

In the first gospels Jesus’ vocabulary is naturally Jewish 
throughout, in John it is largely Greek. The author thinks 
in dramatic contrasts in terms of a dualism of light and 
darkness, love and hate, flesh and spirit, God and the Prince 
of this world. In the former gospels the prodigal is still 
God’s son in a far country; in the fourth his enemies are 
“children of your father the devil,” who will die in their sins 
if they do not hold a certain view of his person.® 

These constitute only a fraction of the differences between 
the two in doctrine, in viewpoint, and in vocabulary. But 
the contrast is equally great in the discrepancies in historic 
events. It is scarcely too much to say that there are almost 
none on which they agree. In the synoptics Jesus’ whole 
ministry, which lasts perhaps a year, is placed in Galilee, 
save for the last week in Jerusalem; in John it extends to 
some three years and centers in Jerusalem in repeated visits. 
In the first gospels the cleansing of the temple was his last 
crucial public act and led swiftly to his death; in the fourth 
gospel it is almost his first act. According to John the crucial 


1 John 7 :13—15. 


_* John 1:45; 6:42. See Appendix “Doctrine and the New Reforma- 
tion” for full discussion of the virgin birth. 
* John 8:24, 44, etc. But compare 3:16. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 151 


miracle of his life which led to his death was the raising of 
Lazarus; while in the first three even the name of Lazarus 
is either unknown or never mentioned.* 

In the earlier records John the Baptist is a rugged, fearless 
prophet of impending doom; in the fourth he is an apologetic 
“voice” who bears witness to the Lamb of God, to con- 
vince in Jesus favor the followers of the sect of the Baptist 
in Ephesus. According to the first three gospels Jesus was 
crucified on the day of the Jewish feast of the Passover, on 
the fifteenth of the first Jewish month, Nisan; according to 
John, who was probably correct in this particular instance, 
it was on the day before the Passover, on the fourteenth 
Nisan.?_ According to Mark his one cry upon the cross was 
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ John 
leaves out such signs of human frailty; instead men fall to 
the ground when he speaks to them at his arrest.® 

Thus, in theology, in vocabulary, in viewpoint, in the 
message and the historic picture of the life of Jesus which 
it presents, the fourth gospel is at wide variance with and 
often in irreconcilable contradiction to the first three. What 
are we to conclude from this discrepancy? If it were con- 
fined to one or two events like the cleansing of the temple 
we mnight try to “harmonize” them and say there were twa 
such events. The difficulty is that none of the gospels hint 
at two such incidents, and if we adopt this expedient we 
should have to make two events in almost every case of 
discrepancy. There is no explanation if we say the four 
gospels were all written under the direction of the same 
group of apostles, when Matthew and John flatly contradict 
each other at a hundred points. 

But all becomes clear if we accept the following hypothesis. 

Let us suppose that a Hellenistic Jewish Christian in 
Ephesus had either received the story of Jesus’ life from one 
of the twelve, perhaps the Apostle John, or in early life had 
himself been a witness of some of the events of Jesus’ 


1 John 2:13-22; 11:1-16; Luke 10:38—41. 
? John a :28 ; 19: 14; Luke 22:15. 
* John 8 3-6, 


152 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


ministry. He had meditated long upon the significance of 
Jesus in the light of his own experience and is able to make 
a synthesis of the synoptic tradition of Jesus’ earthly life 
and the Pauline experience of the risen Christ. To the 
Alexandrian Greek and Stoic philosophers, the Logos was 
at once the immanent reason and the uttered Word of God. 
This writer says that Jesus is the eternal Word made flesh. 
In terms of these new categories of thought he retells the 
whole story, interpreting the inner significance of Jesus’ life. 
In accordance with the “I” style then common in Ephesus,* 
he puts into the mouth of Jesus the whole body of his teach- 
ing as he understands it in terms of the life in Ephesus and 
of the Greco-Roman world of that day. Far removed from 
provincial Jewish technicalities, the whole thought is intel- 
ligible and makes a universal appeal in every age. 

Now there was just such a man in Ephesus between 95 
and 110 A. D. in the Presbyter, or “Elder” John.? Harnack, 
Streeter, Moffatt, B. W. Robinson and others are inclined 
to think this Elder John was the author of the gospel, and 
that it could not have been the Apostle John, who, according 
to Papias, writing about 140 A. D., suffered a martyr’s death 
apparently before 70 A. D. The gospel is written in Greek, 
while John the son of Zebedee was an Aramaic-speaking, 
Galilean fisherman. According to Streeter we have no evi- 
dence that the authorship of the book was ever attributed to 
the apostle John before the third century. Perhaps it will 
be safest to say that this Elder John, or some other Hellen- 
istic Christian in Ephesus like him, wrote the fourth gospel. 


*Deissmann, “Light from the Ancient East,” II, 3, E, quoted by 
B. W. Robinson in “The Gospel of John,” p. 25. 

*“Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, writing about 140 A. D., says, 
‘And again, on any occasion when a person came in my way who had 
been a follower of the Elders, I would enquire about the discourses 
of the Elders—what was said by Andrew, or by Peter, or by Philip 
or by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew, or any other of 
the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the Elder John, the 
disciples of the Lord, say.’ Aristion and the Elder John, it appears 
from this, were in the unique position of being ‘disciples of the Lord’ 
who ranked after the Apostles themselves as depositories of au- 
thentic tradition. Presumably they must at least have seen the Lord 
in the flesh.” Streeter, “The Four Gospels,” p. 18 


2 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 153 


Had it been by the Apostle John it would have been at once 
received by the churches everywhere. In actual fact, how- 
ever, it met with much opposition and was not acknowledged 
by the church in Rome until the close of the second century. 

The writer of the gospel frankly states that he has selected 
only certain material for a special purpose and that his 
definite object is not, as in the case of Luke, the writing of 
an accurate history, “but these are written that ye might 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that 
believing ye might have life through his name.’* He felt 
the living Christ had many things still to say, as the Spirit 
would guide into ali the truth, and that he was speaking 
through him. It is just such a gospel as Paul would have 
written. But whereas Paul determines to know only the 
risen Christ, the fourth evangelist, to meet the Gnostic 
heresies of his time: which emphasized Christ’s deity but 
practically emptied his life and death of all reality, grounds 
the work of the living Christ in the humanity of the historic 
Jesus. He is thus the connecting link between the synoptics 
and Paul. To Mark, Jesus is a historic person; to Paul he 
is the invisible Lord; to John he is both. The whole gospel 
might be regarded as an amplification of the text, “He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father.’”’ Jesus is the revelation 
of God. 

There is some evidence to show that the stories told by 
John of the life of Jesus had been used by him repeatedly 
in presenting the gospel in private conversation and public 
discourse in Ephesus. The chapters read like a series of 
sermons.? The writer’s Greek categories, such as the Logos, 


John 20:30-31. 

? Note in Chapter 2 his sermon on marriage, with the contrast 
between wine and water, or, the Christian religion and its rivals; 
Chapter 3, a sermon on the new birth dramatized about Nicodemus ; 
4, the water of life represented in the woman at the well; 5, on 
sickness and health, and the man beside the pool; 6, on the bread 
of life, and the parable of feeding the five thousand; 8, 9, blindness 
and the light of the world, illustrated in the blind man; 10, the good 
shepherd and the sheep; 11, death and resurrection, illustrated by 
Lazarus; 12, sacrifice and glory, illustrated in the cross; 13-17, 
the last discourse of the Living Christ. ‘These sermons originally 
preached by John in Ephesus have become the most popular and 


154 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


are illuminating to his particular audience but they are also 
limiting conceptions. There is a certain relativity in all 
language. The Jewish conception of a warlike Messiah or 
an angelic being did not perfectly fit Jesus; neither did the 
Greek philosophic concept of the Logos, though it helped 
men to conceive of a being who was other than God and yet 
partook of his nature. Jesus transcended both terms. But 
John here makes the transition and transplants Christianity 
from Jewish to Gentile soil. Hitherto the church had been 
speaking to a Greek world in a Jewish vocabulary. Hence- 
forth the gospel was in a universal language. 

In America today this writer would doubtless find fresh 
terms, more intelligible to us. But his object would still 
be the same, not to write events “in order,’ or philosophy or 
theology in fixed and final orthodox terms, but that we might 
have life, and do the same works and “greater works than 
these.” . James and the orthodox Judaizers were the con- 
servatives in their day. Both Paul and John were counted 
dangerous radicals when they sought to state the eternal truth 
in ever fresh ways that men might rediscover the life eternal, 
which is ever fundamental and ever modern. 

Throughout the gospel it is evident that the writer is 
facing the hostility of the Jews. He is also trying to win 
over the followers of the sect of John the Baptist, which 
persisted well into the third century.1_ Chiefly, however, he 
is trying to win Greek converts from the mystery-religions 
and other faiths. He is also confronting the Gnostic sect 
who believed in the deity but not in the real humanity of 
Jesus, for he insists on his full humanity. The Jewish Chris- 
tians were looking for the speedy second coming of the 
Messiah but this presented great difficulty to the Greeks, so 
with consummate tact, saying nothing of a visible bodily 
second coming, he places the emphasis on the fact that Christ 
has come already by the Spirit, and that men have already 
‘the most widely read religious literature in the world.” B. W. 


Robinson “The Gospel of John,” p. 55. This is probably the best 
single modern volume on the gospel for the average minister or 


layman. 
* Cf. Acts 18:24, 19:7. John 1:19-28. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 155 


passed out of death into life. The universal appeal of Jesus 
is made throughout both to the Jew and the Greek. The 
fundamental ideas of the gospel are that God has revealed 
himself in the person of Jesus, who is the Word of God 
incarnate in humanity ; that he imparts life to all who receive 
him by faith; that through faith men may enter into union 
with Christ and have his life imparted to them and repro- 
duced in them. 


Revelation 


If we pass from the fourth gospel to the book of Reve- 
lation, we again enter a new world of thought. It differs 
from the gospel of John more than that does from the 
synoptics. To understand it we must know something of 
the apocalyptic literature which had sprung up during the 
century before and the century after Christ. In an age of 
pessimism and hopeless despair, occasioned by the rule of 
pagan nations, especially of Rome, men turned to God with 
the prayer and the prophecy that he would intervene to slay 
the wicked, reward the faithful, and establish his righteous 
reign by force. The book of Daniel in the Old Testament 
and Revelation in the New are characteristic of this literature. 
In 164 B. C. under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes 
the writer of Daniel comforts the Jews by the assurance that 
God will intervene to save his people and speedily bring in 
the end of the age. 

More than two centuries later, the writer of Revelation, 
during the latter period of the reign of Domitian (81-96 
A. D.), promises the same hope of deliverance to persecuted 
Christians. The church was threatened with the pagan cult 
of Caesar-worship, the emperor claiming the title “Lord and 
God.” While gladly ready to pray for him, the Christians 
refused to worship the emperor. In consequence persecution 
had broken out. Some had suffered martyrdom and one who 
called himself John was banished to the island of Patmos. 

He believes he has a clear revelation of the ultimate 
triumph of God’s cause. He writes to his fellow Christians 
in the seven churches on the mainland near Ephesus his great 


156 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


message of comfort. God reigns! Righteousness will surely 
triumph; evil will be destroyed and disappear; God’s King- 
dom will come and the kings of the earth will bring their 
glory into it. This is his message of inspiration, hope and 
confidence in a day when it was desperately needed. The 
book was undoubtedly at the time, and has been repeatedly 
since, an untold help to believers who were discouraged in 
days of darkness or persecution. 

All the events prophesied in the book “must shortly come 
to pass.” Several times the word is repeated, “Behold I 
come quickly’? This is the opening and closing refrain of 
the book. The events were to take place in that generation. 
The writer speaks of Rome as Babylon, remembered in the 
sight of God in “the fierceness of his wrath,’ soon to be 
destroyed. He would have been surprised if he could have 
foreseen that Rome would become the capital and chief 
center of the Christian church and that Christ’s cause would 
triumph not by a sudden miracle of force but through long 
ages of discipline and moral suasion. 

In common with other apocalyptic books the language is 
highly symbolic. The book runs in cycles of seven. Accord- 
ing to Dr. Moffatt, the seven seals represent the certainty, 
the seven trumpets the promulgation, and the seven bowls 
the actual execution of doom upon the world.’ 

John was a common name in Palestine and the author does 
not claim to be an apostle. It would seem that the vocabulary, 
the style and the theological ideas are so far removed from 
the fourth gospel that both could not have been written by 
the same person. Moffatt shows that the blend of Hebraic 
and vernacular Greek is utterly defiant of grammar. “No 
book in the New Testament with so good a record was so 


+See Rev. 1:1; 22:6, 

PREV. 220,105 "3:11; CU RM: SAlpeaat RU Aa 

* Rome is the “beast with the ten horns and seven heads.” ‘The 
head is the emperor and those who worship him bear the mark of 
the beast. In the apocalyptic language of the day the beast’s number 
666 spells the words “Nero Cesar.” Nero’s rule of infamy had 
lasted from 54 to 68 A. D. and there was a widely current rumor 
that he was to return as the agent of Satan, he whose “death- 
wound was healed.” Rey. 13:14-18, 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 157 


long in gaining acceptance.” After the period of persecution 
passed, there was a widespread distaste for the book in the 
early church, and it was especially alae among the 
Syrian and Greek churches. 

It is with the theology of the book that we are especially 
concerned. There are parts of great beauty, as in its vision 
of the redeemed at the end. It is strong in faith, strong in 
hope, but not in love. Jesus is introduced as the lion and 
the lamb, but the former predominates. The book combines 
the Jewish, Davidic, conquering, military Messiah, who 
triumphs by bloodshed and rules by force, with the Christian 
idea of a sacrificial Savior. God is a majestic, enthroned 
figure, but not the Father in touch with his children and 
knowing the sparrow’s fall. God’s love is never mentioned, 
save that Jerusalem is regarded as the “beloved city.”? “The 
great teachings of the divine Fatherhood, the universal 
brotherhood, the spiritual Kingdom, scarcely appear, but in 
their place we hear hoarse cries for the day of vengeance, and 
see the warrior Christ coming to deluge the earth with 
blood.” Is it the same Jesus who prayed for his enemies, 
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” 
and who bids us love our enemies, who now welters in blood ? 
Ts it the same spirit cf Stephen who cried for the forgiveness 
of his persecutors, that animates the martyrs of this book 
who now thirst for vengeance ?? 

At a hundred points the teaching of Jesus in the gospels is 
here contradicted. The book has done great good and has 
been a comfort to many, yet it is also to be feared that 
“Inquisitions, intolerance and ignorance have thrived on it. 
. . . We must confess that we cannot go to it for our ideas 
of geography or astronomy or the teaching of Jesus. The 
makers of the New Testament canon understood this. They 
debated long whether to include the book. . . . John’s 
apocalypse yet has a great value permanent for religion. It 
is this: Righteousness shall finally conquer; evil must be 


fs eo 4 20:9. Christ’s love for Christians is mentioned in Rev. 
2 Rev. 6 5. 10. 


158 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


punished and eventually disappear before the ever-coming 
Kingdom of God.” ? 

The wide difference in viewpoint and teaching between the 
Revelation and the gospel of John, between the fourth and 
the first three gospels, between Paul and James, and many 
other writers of the New Testament, is reproduced in the 
diversity and liberty of thought among the early Christians 
of the first century. Only later, when the creeds had been 
formulated and correct doctrine under ecclesiastical control 
had been substituted for Jesus’ way of living, was a single 
hard and fast orthodoxy of belief insisted upon. In the 
beginning, where the Spirit of the Lord was there was 
liberty. Have we still that liberty today? 

More than three centuries ago, as we have seen, Galileo 
urged that we should go to the Bible not as a scientific 
authority but as a moral guide. And even as such a guide 
the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life. We should go to 
the Bible not as a storehouse of proof texts but as a moral 
and spiritual guide that must be interpreted by the Spirit. 
What controversy, bitterness and misunderstanding might 
have been avoided, what inquisitions and persecutions and 
divisions might have been escaped, if we could have grasped 
the spirit of Jesus, the liberty of Paul, the counsel of Galileo. 

There is spiritual vision and inspiration in Revelation for 
those who can read it in this spirit. But can we take it as 
literal prophecy? If so, did the statement, “I come quickly,” 
and the doom of the world that “must shortly come to pass,” 
mean more than nineteen centuries? If so, may it still mean 
more than that period in the future? Has there been literal 
fulfillment? We read, “Our earth is degenerate in these 
latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily 
coming to an end. Children no longer obey their parents. 
The end of the world is evidently approaching.” This is not 
the latest word of premillennial prophecy. This is the in- 
scription on an Assyrian tablet now in the museum at Con- 
stantinople. Its date is 2800 B. C. It was written 4,726 


ee A. Hawley, “The Teaching of the Apocrypha and Apocalypse,” 
p. 165. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 159 


years ago, or long before Abraham was born. And for the 
last four thousand seven hundred years men have been say- 
ing that the end was at hand, that it was literally coming 
“speedily.” 

Dean Hodges well says, “The Bible is a dangerous and 
dynamic book, radical and revolutionary, essentially demo- 
cratic, and puts all our conservatisms in peril.”* If we ask 
how we are to interpret this library or sacred collection of 
books, we may take Jesus as our example and as the test and 
touchstone of the whole. The Old Testament was his own 
Bible. He lived and had his being in the Scriptures, yet he 
was never guilty of bibliolatry. In his controversy with the 
Pharisees over eating with unwashen hands, he says that 
nothing without can defile a man, thereby contradicting Levi- 
ticus XI and Deuteronomy XIV. He thus substitutes an 
ethical for a ceremonial principle of cleanliness. He refuses 
to accept the regulation of Deuteronomy concerning divorce 
as on too low a plane. He says that Moses’ regulation was 
due to hardness of heart, to moral immaturity. He thus 
shows that a progressive revelation of God’s will was con- 
ditioned by the moral perception of the hearers. 

In the Sermon on the Mount when he shows that he 
comes not to destroy but to fulfil, in each case he opposes a 
quotation from the law with his “I say unto you.” The con- 
flict was between the absolute authority of an external law 
and the immediate intuition of God in the individual. In 
place of “hate thine enemy,” he substitutes “love your ene- 
mies,” thus challenging the Old Testament and a universal 
human instinct. He takes his stand against the imprecatory 
Psalms and the general attitude of the Old Testament to 
enemies.2, As Bousset says, “Later Judaism developed a 
genius for hate.” Jesus was constantly “correcting, supple- 
menting, spiritualizing, universalizing’”’ the Old Testament.’ 
In his light the whole Bible must be read and under the 

*“How to Know the Bible,” p. 348. 

7Psalms 90:6; 137:8, 9; 140:9-10; 1 Sam. 15:3, 33; Ex. 17:14; 
Deut. 7:2; Esther 9:5-16; 2 Kings 1:9-15, etc. 


® See “The Constructive Revolution of Jesus” by Samuel Dickey, 
pp. 39-65. 


160 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


guidance of the Spirit who is promised to guide us into the 
truth. 

Lord Balfour writes, “Taking for illustration the collec- 
tion of ancient books held sacred in the West, they inquire 
whether we are really to believe that the work of creation 
was accomplished in six days, that, life, human and sub- 
human, was almost exterminated by a flood, that springing 
afresh from the surviving remnant, mankind repeopled the 
earth. . . . Evidently summaries of this type treat the 
Bible as if it professed to be a textbook of cosmology and 
history, with the advantage over other textbooks of being 
inspired and therefore infallible. . . . Inspired, in the 
opinion of the present writer, the Bible certainly is. Infal- 
lible in the sense commonly attributed to that word, it cer- 
tainly is not.”* 

Undoubtedly if we study the Bible from the modern view- 
point, a frank facing of all the facts does constitute a chal- 
lenge to faith, But thousands of Christians have made this 
transition to the modern view and have found a reasonable, 
joyous, victorious faith. It may affect our conventional 
beliefs and traditions but not God’s eternal truth. The same 
Jesus who pointed out shortcomings and mistakes of the 
past, made men confident that “when he the Spirit of truth 
is come he shall guide you into all the truth.” Let us go for- 
ward not in fear but in faith. We shall find this marvelous 
book, not a letter that killeth, but under the guidance of the 
Spirit a very fountain of living water to quench the deepest 
thirst of our hearts. The closing challenge of Revelation is 
still true for this book and for the Bible as a whole, “Let him 
that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst, come. 
And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” 
The writer on the barren island of Patmos knew this eternal, 
inward, spiritual fact, that the world would not recognize 
then and will not now. That perennial fountain of life is 
springing to quench our thirst today. Here is a new chall- 
enge to faith. 

Space forbids our dealing with each book in the New 

1+“Science, Religion and Reality,” p. 9. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 161 


Testament. We must content ourselves with the following 
summary showing the chronology of the principal books and 
events. The dates in some cases are only approximate or 
conjectural. We have tried to follow the consensus of 
opinion of the best modern scholarship.* 


Chronology of the New Testament 


6 B. C. The Birth of Jesus. 60. Colossians, Philemon, 
27 A. D. Baptism of Jesus. Ephesians, Philippians. 

29 or 30. The Crucifixion. 64. 1 Peter. 

30 or 35. Conversion of 70. The Fall of Jerusalem; 


Paul. The Gospel of Mark. 
50. 1 and 2 Thessalonians. 80-95. Luke and Acts. 
52 (or 48). Galatians. 80. Hebrews. 

52-54. land 2 Corinthians. 85-90. Matthew. 
54. Accession of Nero. 96. Revelation. 


56. Romans, Arrest of Paul. 95-115. John, 1, 2, 3 John. 
150.2 Peter, 


The Roman Emperors 


Julius Caesar 100-44B.C. Titus A. D. 79-81 
Augustus 31B.C-14A.D. Domitian A. D. 81-96 
Tiberius A.D. 14-37 Nerva A. D. 96-98 
Caligula A.D.37-41 Trajan A. D. 98-117 
Claudius A. D.41-54 Hadrian A. D. 117-138 
Nero A.D.54-68 Antoninus 

Civil Strife A. D. 68-69 Pius A. D. 138-161 
Vespasian A. D.69-79 Marcus 


Aurelius A.D.161-180 
Chonology of the Old Testament? 


1, Before 1000 B.C. Pre-Monarchic Period. Oral accounts 
of Abraham, Moses, etc. War march songs, proverbs, 
riddles, oracles, etc. 


*See Moffatt’s “Introduction,” XVIf. Moffatt’s “Historical New 
Testament,” 79f,. Principal A. J. Grieve in Peake’s one-volume 
atone On on the Bible,” p. 657. Streeter’s “The Four Gospels,” 

. 150. “Outline of Christianity,” vol. I, p. 394. 

Ps Following Bewer’s “Literature of the Old Testament.” 


162 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


2. c. 1000-910 B. C. The time of David, Solomon, Jero- 
boam I. Poems, narratives and laws: the Book of the 
Covenant (Ex. 20:23-23:19) : The “Cultic Decalogue” 
(Ex. 34). 

3. 900-700 B.C. The Ninth and Eighth Centuries. Elijah 
and Elisha (1K. 17-19; 2K. 2-8; 13:14-21). 


c. 850 B. C. THe JAuwist or YAHwistT History, J, the 
first of the four basic documents of the Old Testament. 
Moses had given the fundamental principles in the Decalogue 
and Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:23-23:19) concerning 
monotheism and social morality. About 850 B. C. appeared 
the first Hebrew historian. He prevailingly uses the word 
“Jahweh” for God, spelled phonetically “Yahweh,” which 
was the real pronunciation of “Jehovah.” Hence he is called 
the Yahwist. He writes the first comprehensive history ever 
written, long before the Greek historians. He begins with 
the story of creation, now found in Gen. 2:4 to 4:25, “in 
the day” when Yahweh formed man out of the dust, placed 
him in Eden, made woman out of his rib, and founded the 
family. He tells the story of man’s fall, of Cain and Abel, 
of early giants and demigods, of Noah and the flood and 
man’s sinfulness. Then follows the promise to Abraham 
of the chosen people, the story of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph 
and the deliverance from Egypt; of Moses, Joshua, the 
conquest of Canaan and finally David’s glorious reign. 
Throughout, this great writer sees history as the working 
out of God’s purpose.* 

c.750 B.C. Tuer Erontst History, E. About a century 
after the Yahwist’s history a prophetic writer influenced by 
Elijah, and about the time of Amos, wrote a history of man 
and the Jewish people from the point of view of the northern 
Kingdom of Israel, as the Yahwist had from that of the 
Judean southern Kingdom. Because he avoided the proper 
name “Yahweh” until the time of Moses, and uses the 
Hebrew word “Elohim” for God, this anonymous writer is 


* The original story of J is in Gen. 2:4b4:25; 5:29; 6:1-8; 7:1-15, 


7-10, 12, 16b, 17b, 22£; 8:2b, 3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22; 9:18-27; 10:8-19, 
21, 24-30; 11:1-9, ete. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 163 


called the ‘‘Elohist.”” Without the vast sweep of J, E begins 
with the story of Abraham. There is a distinct advance in 
his theological and ethical views. E corrects the bad impres- 
sion left by J of Abraham’s deceit regarding Sarah, left in 
Pharaoh’s harem (Gen. 20:1-17). He retells beautifully 
the story of Joseph, of Moses, of the conquest of Canaan, 
of the Judges, of the theocratic monarchy of Saul and David. 
E is a wonderful moral teacher who sees a progressive 
revelation of God in history, as a means of religious instruc- 
tion. Later the accounts of J and E were combined in one 
narrative. 

c. 750 B. C. Amos, the first literary prophet, the messen- 
ger of social righteousness, and of the moral character of 
God. 

c. 745-735 B. C. Hosea, prophet of the mercy and love 
of God. 738-700 B. C. Isaiah proclaims the faithful, 
universal God of all. 


4. The Seventh Century. 

621 B. C. DEuTERONoMy PUBLISHED, D. In a time of 
superstition, witchcraft and the worship of Baal and Asherah, 
and of human sacrifices to Moloch, the prophetic party, as 
followers of Isaiah, stood for exclusive, ethical, spiritual 
monotheism centering in a united worship in one sanctuary 
at Jerusalem (Deut. 12:2-7) uniting the prophetic and 
priestly views. The anonymous master-mind who wrote 
Deuteronomy believes he is giving the people the principles 
of the religion of Moses. There is a moral advance in social 
values, in the treatment of slaves, of woman, the family, 
the administration of justice, the value of the individual, 
and the conception of God and man. Israel is to be like 
God and to love him with the whole heart (6:4-9). The 
new book was placed in the hands of King Josiah, who at 
once began a reformation with the cleansing of the temple 
(2 Kings 22 f.), based upon this authoritative book, which 
now became the chief authority of Israel’s religion. 

c. 627-626 B. C. Zephaniah. c. 615 Nahum, 626-585 
Jeremiah, the teacher of personal religion. 


164 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


5. The Sixth Century. 

600-590 B. C. Habakkuk. 593-571 Ezekiel. The Holi- 
ness Code (Leviticus 17-26). 546-539 Deutero-Isaiah 
(Isaiah Chaps. 40-55), the prophet of the vicarious Suffering 
Servant. 

c. 500 B.C. Tue Priest Cope, P. One of the four great 
documents of the Hexateuch, by a priestly writer; formal, 
precise, dry; combining history and law, teaching that salva- 
tion is by correct ritual and sacrifice. He begins with the 
majestic story of creation in Genesis 1, leading to the priestly 
climax of the institution of the Sabbath of complete rest. 
He follows with the story of the patriarchs, circumcision, 
the passover (Ex. 12:1-14), the exodus, laws of the sanc- 
tuary, and the origin of all rites and institutions and sacri- 
fices ; the ceremonial being to him more important than the 
moral law. Salvation, which in Amos and the prophets was 
by righteousness, is here by ritual. The law was a heavy 
yoke to many. The code was adopted in solemn assembly 
under Ezra (Neh. 8-10).? 

The four books were united in one historico-legal work, 
JEDP, as the basis of Israel’s religion; completed about 
BOUL ai har 


6. The Fifth Century. 
c. 460 B. C. Malachi. c. 400 B. C. Joel. The Book of 
Ruth. Nehemiah and Ezra. 


7. The Fourth Century. 
Earlier Proverbs. Job. Isaiah, chaps. 24—27. 


8. The Third Century. 
c. 300-250 B. C. Chronicles. Esther. Song of Songs. 
Jonah, Ecclesiastes. 


9. The Second Century. 
Completion of the Psalter, as a canonical hymn book which 
had grown after the manner of our modern hymnals, 165- 
*Gen. 1:1-2:4a; 5; 6:9-22; 7:6, 11, 13-l6a, 17a, 18-21, 24; 8:1, 
Za, 3b-5, 13a, 14-19; 9:1-17, 284; 10: va 20, 226, olfs Tks 10-27, 


311: 12 Ab, 5: 10; 6a, 11b, 12a; 16: la,\.3, 15f; 17; 19 20; 21:1b, 
2b, 3-5; 23 aes :7-1la, eae etc. 


THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 165 


164. Daniel. Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria (175-164 
B. C.), endeavored forcibly to Hellenise the Jews. He 
looted the temple, killed the people, razed the walls, forbade 
Sabbath observance, stopped the sacrifices, erected an altar 
to Zeus in place of the altar of burnt-offering and sacrificed 
swine upon it. Matthias, with his five sons, under the great 
Judas Maccabeus, led a revolt, recaptured Jerusalem, cleansed 
the temple and freed the people. In January, 164 B. C., or 
in the previous month, the writer of Daniel prophesies against 
the “little one,” Antiochus, and expects the end by the inter- 
vention from God in 164 B. C. (Dan. 9:25-27.) 

c. 400 B. C. The Canon of the Law fixed after Ezra, 
containing “the five books of Moses.” 

c. 200 B. C. .Canon of the Prophets closed; Joshua, 
Judges, Saul, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the 
Twelve. 

c. 100 A. D. The Canon of the Old Testament finally 
closed with “The Writings” or Hagiographa, including the 
Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentation, Eccle- 
siastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. It 
was a long time before Daniel was included in the canon, 
as it met with much opposition. The Christian church 
finally took over the Jewish scriptures, incorporating them 
in their Bible, 


CuapTer V 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? 


What is Christianity? Is it a matter primarily intellectual, 
of correct opinion and right belief; is it an emotional experi- 
ence; is it adherence to a moral code; is it fundamentally 
sacramental, a way of salvation by certain prescribed cere- 
monies and sacred rites; is it a question of membership in 
some true church; is it a social system for improving human 
conditions and relations? Or, is it a way of life embracing 
all of these elements—intellectual, emotional, moral, sym- 
bolic, esthetic, ecclesiastical and social? Is it following Jesus’ 
way of life, in the love of God and man? 

Again, is Christianity static or progressive? Is it a cast- 
iron framework of fixed rules, a closed system, a faith 
finished and completed; or is it a progressive revelation 
culminating in Jesus and in his living principles, capable of 
endless expansion and of ever-fresh application? Is it 
continually open to the discovery of new truth, and is it 
still true, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, is 
come, he shall guide you into all the truth?’ Is the religion 
of Jesus a kernel of truth overlaid by successive husks of 
dogma, ritual and ecclesiasticism? Or is it the germ out 
of which the church has necessarily and legitimately devel- 
oped, as the oak from the acorn, drawing its nutriment from 
_ the soil of the ever-changing environment in which it grew? 
“The truly evangelical part of Christianity is not that which 
has never changed, for in a sense, all has changed and has 
never ceased to change, but that which in spite of all external 
changes proceeds from the impulse given by Christ, and is 
inspired by his Spirit, serves the same ideal and the same 
hope.’ 

Perhaps we can best answer the question as to whether 


SACS. (a 41s Ghn v1O<12;> La 
* Loisy, “The Gospel and the Church,” pp. 17, 277. 


166 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 167 


Christianity is static or progressive by an inductive study 
of its sources, and an examination of the origins of our 
present-day religion. There is a sense in which we are 
debtors to the past as heirs of all the ages. We are like the 
householder who brings forth out of his treasure things 
new and old, in the daily fresh discovery of new truth 
and in the sharing of the treasures of human experience of 
the past. A study of the past reveals the fact that what we 
now call Christianity is drawn from several sources: Old 
Testament Judaism, the Jesus of the Gospels, the work and 
writings of the Apostle Paul, the Graeco-Roman civilization, 
and the oriental mystery-religions of the first century. Let 
us briefly examine each of these in turn. 


Old Testament Sources 


To the Judaism of the Old Testament we owe the incal- 
culable debt of ethical monotheism. Instead of finding the 
Bible one book teaching at a dead level the same truth 
throughout, we found it rather, as its name implies, a library, 
recording the progressive revelations of ever-higher ranges 
of truth as men were able to attain them. Some of the 
earliest conceptions of God in the Old Testament are ele- 
mental and mixed with pagan and polytheistic elements. A 
survival of early polydemonism, for instance, is found in the 
two scapegoats, one for Jehovah and the other for the demon 
Azazel. The sons of God are represented as entering into 
polygamous marriages with the daughters of men.? Primi- 
tive man tended to make his gods in his own image. While 
to early Israel Jehovah was the Lord of lords, they did not 
deny the reality of the gods of the surrounding peoples, 
of Baal, Asherah, Moloch, and Dagon. 

But gradually in this atmosphere of myth and legend, of 
folklore and tradition, of polytheism and idolatry, men with 
a deeper experience of God proclaimed new truths. We 


*Lev. 16:7-10, Revised Version. We are deeply indebted through- 
out this section to Professor Bewer in his “Literature of the Old 
Testament in its Historical Development,’ and to Basil King in 
“The Discovery of God.” 

2 Gen. 6:1-7. 


168 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


can trace the advancing thought of God in certain great 
forward steps which are recorded in the Old Testament. 
Each of these is connected chiefly, though not exclusively, 
with the name of a prophet. 

1. With the name of Moses, according to our records, we 
connect the thought of God as the One, the only God. To 
the exclusion of all idols and of the worship of other gods 
the chosen people were called to the worship of Jehovah. 
This ethical monotheism became the foundation of spiritual 
worship, of moral human relations, of a higher civilization, 
and was finally enunciated in the command, ““Thou shalt have 
none other gods beside me.” “Hear, O Israel: the Lord 
our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy might.”+ To Judaism we owe this first combination of 
monotheism and morality, an incalculable gift to humanity. 
Only those who have lived in lands where polytheism and 
idolatry constitute the basis of life, with their inevitable 
results in ignorance, superstition and diverse and harmful 
moral standards, can realize the value of this cornerstone 
of all civilization. 

2. Amos gave the world the conception of God as right- 
eous, and ushered in a new era, one of the greatest spiritual 
epochs in all history. About 750 B. C. at a time of social 
corruption, of the revelry of the rich and the oppression of 
the poor, this plain shepherd, like a lay carpenter who was 
to follow him centuries later, suddenly appeared at a harvest 
festival in northern Israel to proclaim the moral character 
of Jehovah and to insist that his chief requirement was not 
sacrifice to himself but social justice to men.? He is the 
first prophet of righteousness, and lifts man to a new 
conception of God. 

3. Hosea, about 754-735 B. C. reveals a God of love and 
mercy, as he comes to realize these qualities in his tragic 
experience with his unfaithful wife. Even in her shame 


1Deut. 5:7; 6:4. 
7“T hate, I despise your feasts . . . but let judgment roll down 
as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Amos 5:21-25. 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 169 


he must love her still: “even as Jehovah loves the children of 
Israel, though they turn to other gods.” So in his bitter 
experience the love of God is realized and incarnated in the 
suffering prophet. Joining mercy and righteousness, he 
refines and spiritualizes religion: “I desire loving kindness 
and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than 
burnt offerings.” 

4. Isaiah, 738-700 B. C.,1 “the most majestic of the 
prophets,” becomes the representative of God to his genera- 
tion by revealing Jehovah as faithful, universal, the God of 
all. In the year that King Uzziah died, 738, he saw the 
vision of holiness that changed his life. In the face of 
captivity and the doom of his nation he rises by faith to 
the conception of a faithful God who will yet save a remnant 
of his people to carry out his purpose; not as the tribal God 
of Israel, but as the universal God of the whole earth. If 
Amos sees the height of his righteousness, and Hosea the 
depth of his love, Isaiah grasps more of the width and sweep 
of God’s purpose for the world. 

5. Jeremiah, c. 626-585 B. C., in his own individual 
experience first realized Jehovah as the God of the individual, 
the God of personal relations, and religion as a matter of the 
soul. He incarnates his own message and is a forerunner 
of the Man of Sorrows as he spiritualizes religion for all 
time. In an age of prosperous materialism, he stands alone 
against the world. Later, as he faces the failure of the 
nation, the breaking of the law, and the destruction of the 
temple, he discovers the individual’s responsibility and the 
possibilities of personal communion with God, in direct 
access to him. He calls for individual repentance and faith. 
He points to “a God who is near” with whom a man may 
speak as friend with friend. Despairing of the nation, he 
turns to the individual and declares a New Covenant written 
on the hearts of men. With the “great unknown” Second 
Isaiah who was to follow him, he marks the spiritual height 
of the Old Testament. 

1 As in this instance several of the dates given are only approximate. 


A fuller list will be found in the chronological table at the end of 
the preceding chapter. 


170 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


6. The Second or Deutero-Isaiah, c. 546-539, so called 
because the writings of this great prophet of the Exile were 
later affixed to the book of Isaiah, reveals the very heart of 
the God of the vicarious Suffering Servant. Utterly unlike 
Isaiah, the prophet of doom and of the coming captivity of 
Jerusalem two centuries before, this great comforter and 
prophet of hope during the Babylonian captivity, whose 
messages are recorded in Isaiah 40-66, begins with his call: 
“Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.” He proclaims the 
unity and universality of God as against all man-made idols. 
His characteristic message is embodied in the portrait of the 
“Suffering Servant” of Jehovah, picturing the innocent 
suffering of the nation of Israel for all nations, which was 
to prove the type of the highest ideal in all religion, realized 
finally in Jesus of Nazareth—a “light to the Gentiles that 
thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth.” 
Thus from the lowliest and humblest beginnings and from 
the first faint dawn in a great darkness, the light of the 
promised Sun of Righteousness breaks at the close of the 
Old Testament. 


The Fact of Christ 


In estimating our debt to the past and asking what is 
Christianity, let us turn from Judaism to Jesus. Starting 
with no theological presuppositions, let us take him as we 
find him. There suddenly appears a young prophet in Gali- 
lee, who, four and a half centuries after Malachi, steps out 
of the silence of his carpenter shop to call all men to be his 
brothers and the children of the one Heavenly Father. Like 
Amos, the shepherd-prophet who dramatically challenged 
the nation in northern Israel; not unlike Jeremiah or John 
the Baptist, who called the people to repentance, Jesus sud- 
denly Iaunches, in less than three years, the greatest spiritual 
movement in history. Without writing a word himself, this 
peasant carpenter has somehow stimulated the greatest 
volume of literature known to the world, and the book which 
contains the record of his life has become, not only the best- 


*Is. 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53 :12. 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 171 


seller of all time, but the only approach to the world’s uni- 
versal book. From the first it seemed there was something 
incalculable and unique about him. Can we attempt to 
evaluate our debt to him? 

1. Jesus gathered, centered and simplified, not only Juda- 
ism, but religion for all time, in the single universal essential 
of righteous love. He polarized religion to the love of God 
and man. He united in one indivisible, vital organism of 
truth, the divine and human, the mystical and the moral, the 
personal and the social, communion and service, inflow and 
overflow. Implicitly and explicitly, he cut away a laby- 
rinthine forest of non-essentials, of limitations, hindrances, 
traditions and evils, and set man free from all enslavement 
and entanglement for the great adventure of life itself. 

The Pharisees had reduced the burdensome law to six 
hundred and thirteen fine points, with the scrupulous tithing 
of mint, anise and cummin, and all the conflicting interpre- 
tations of hair-splitting casuistry. This young carpenter- 
rabbi, in the face of the official authority of the Scribes, the 
enormous influence of the Pharisees, the patriotic popular 
nationalism of the Zealots, the awe of Moses, the super- 
human voice of the Law and the Prophets and the dead 
weight of the tradition of the past, pierces to the heart of 
reality in immediate spiritual intuition, with his “I say unto 
you.” He liberates and frees all who dare follow him from 
enslaving legalism, literalism, dogmatism and ecclesiasticism. 
He is overawed neither by the law, the sabbath, nor the 
temple. He bursts the bonds of narrow nationalism, race 
prejudice and privilege. He challenges the power of unjust 
wealth and its lucrative traffic in the temple courts. By 
implication he arraigns the whole war system in refusing 
to resort to destructive force, committing his cause to the 
sole principle of love that never faileth. He simplifies all 
life in the single principle of holy love. 

2. Jesus experienced and revealed God as Father. The 
word “God” was almost as old as man, and “Father” is found 
in various contexts before Jesus’ time.t Some scholars main. 


BCT sels tls 2 19. 65516. 


172 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


tain that there is little that is new or original in his teaching. 
But if the teaching is read in parallel columns with that of 
his Jewish background in the light of their context and 
content, the striking difference is seen. A perusal of Thomas 
Walker’s “The Reading of Jesus,” or the parallels traced by 
recent German scholars or by Mackintosh, shows that per- 
haps two-thirds of his recorded teachings can be found either 
in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha or the Talmud, and 
were a fresh and forceful restatement of the best in Judaism. 
But, as Dr. Walker concludes, “It does not seem possible 
any longer to deny the originality of the mind of Jesus. He 
stepped out in advance of the mind of his time—he left the 
teaching of the Judaism of his day behind him... . For the 
origin of these things in his teaching which began a new 
movement in religion one must turn to his own marvelously 
resourceful personality.”+ 

With marvelous insight he pierced to the heart of spiritual 
reality and out of the depth of his own unique experience 
of God gave a new creative content and a wealth of meaning 
to terms that were old. His originality was not so much in 
word or thought or expression, as in introducing men to a 
new experience of God and a new way of life realized in 
love. He was new. So new that the face of all the world 
is changed for men who have caught and shared his secret. 

Can devotion frame any richer title than “the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus?’ No volume of words and 


*See Mackintosh, “The Originality of the Christian Message.” 
Dr. Klausner, as a Hebrew, says in his recent life of “Jesus of Naz- 
areth,’ “There is a new thing in the Gospels—Jesus gathered to- 
gether and, so to speak, condensed and concentrated ethical teachings 
in such a fashion as to make them more prominent than in the 
Talmudic Haggada and the Midrashim, where they are interspersed 
among more commonplace discussions and worthless matter. Even 
in the Old Testament .. . this teaching is yet mingled with cere- 
monial laws . . . which also include ideas of vengeance and harsh- 
est reproval.” He continues, “There was yet another element in 
Jesus’ idea of God which Judaism could not accept. Jesus tells 
his disciples that they must love their enemies, since their ‘Father 
in heaven makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good’ . 
With this Jesus introduces something new into the idea of God . . . 
In the Jewish conception of God the wicked are not worthy that 
God’s sun should rise upon them.” ' “Jesus of Nazareth,” pp. 379,389. 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 173 


phrases can exactly describe the content Jesus gave to the 
word Father. His whole life is a commentary upon the 
word. Can faith at its boldest go farther than to say that 
God is like Jesus? Is there not a sense of inadequacy or 
almost blasphemy in applying such a comparison to any 
other? Can we say that God is like Moses, David, Jeremiah 
or Paul? According to Jesus, the God of universal, sov- 
ereign will, is a Father of utter goodness. He who created 
heaven and earth cares for little children, loves his enemies, 
seeks every wayward son as a shepherd his lost sheep and 
welcomes him home, like the prodigal, to the uttermost love 
and full joy of sonship. Jesus was the first to perceive the 
full implications of such fatherhood, to live a whole life in 
this unshaken belief, and to make this faith so creative and 
contagious that not only his immediate followers, but men 
in every age could share his experience and validate his faith 
in God as Father. 

3. Jesus so shared his passion for humanity that he enabled 
men to realize the incalculable value of the individual man 
and the brotherhood of all. He had such faith in the spiritual 
nature, the infinite worth and the boundless possibilities of 
human personality that he saw it not as cheap and transitory 
and debased, but sub specie eternstatis, with the potency 
of life abundant and eternal. Because of his faith in God, 
he believed in man. He staked the issues of his Kingdom 
upon common men. His most daring faith was in the hope- 
less. He was the loyal friend of sinners. The publican, the 
harlot, the leper and the lost were softened by his love and 
quickened by his faith in them. From the thief on the cross 
to Jerry Macaulay, the criminal and the social outcast have 
through him found a new faith in themselves and the 
dynamic to realize a new manhood. Jesus showed us, to 
use Dean Inge’s recent phrase, that “the personality of every 
man and woman is sacred and inviolable.” 

This has increasingly permeated the convictions of common 
men everywhere. Take for illustration the recent manifesto 
of a group of leaders of the British Labor Party: “It is 
our conviction that statesmanship will fail and political pro- 


174 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


grams will prove futile as a solvent of social troubles unless 
they embody the spirit and practice of Christ. . . . We 
proclaim our belief in the gospel of Christ as the final truth 
concerning the relationships of men one with another. We 
ask everyone who reads this manifesto to join in a crusade 
of spiritual regeneration, and to apply the test of the Chris- 
tian spirit to all industrial policies and political programs 
whatsoever.” 

Bernard Shaw, the satirist, voices the same sentiment 
when he says, “I see no way out of the world’s misery but 
the way which would have been found by Christ’s will, if he 
had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman.” 
The lowest man takes on new value when he becomes “the 
brother for whom Christ died.” Even’the hungry, the 
thirsty, the foreign stranger, the naked, the sick and the 
imprisoned criminal are seen in the light of infinite values 
and of divine worth when men see that the service they 
render to needy men they are rendering to Christ and to 
God who gives infinite value to all. 

Robert Louis Stevenson utters the same faith in the com- 
mon man, even the degraded and fallen, which has tended 
to permeate all life since Jesus proclaimed his worth: “It 
matters not where we look, under what climate we observe 
him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, 
burthened with what erroneous morality; by camp fires in 
Assiniboia ... in ships at sea... simple, innocent, cheerful, 
kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for 
others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent 
millions to mechanical employments without hope of change 
in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet 
true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neigh- 
bors, tempted perhaps in vain... . Ah! if I could show you 
this! If I could show you these men and women, all the 
world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of 
error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, 
without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the 
lost fight of virtue, still clinging in the brothel or on the 
scaffold, to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 175 


souls! ... Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation 
groans in mortal frailty, strives with inconquerable constancy: 
surely not all in vain.”* 

But the highest dignity Jesus gave to man was not so 
much by what he taught as by what he was. He had broken 
the moral molds of cramped humanity. Henceforth men 
might look up to the distant attainment of “a full-grown 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
Christ.” He became the standard for a new creation in a 
new type of moral manhood. 

4. Jesus has given the world its highest moral standards. 
He pierces through the vast mass of Jewish tradition slowly 
accumulated on the authority of Scribes and Pharisees, he 
brushes aside the authority of the Mosaic ceremonial code 
and penetrates below the multitude of fixed rules and 
statutes of moral legalism to basic ethical principles. He 
founds all life on the four cornerstones of the divine Father- 
hood, the supreme value of the individual human personality, 
the universal sweep of human brotherhood, and the fulfil- 
ment of life in love, expressed in service and sacrifice, in a 
social order of the Kingdom of God on earth. In these all 
the law and the prophets are fulfilled, and all life realized. 
Mosaic rules may suffice—for an exclusive Jewish national- 
ism. But the spacious and expansive principles of Jesus are 
timeless, as applicable in the twentieth century as in the first, 
and doubtless they will be as applicable in the fortieth as in 
the twentieth. Love and brotherhood can never be out of 
date. 

In many details, openly or secretly, even his own followers 
have not accepted his standards, as, for instance, in his super- 
resistance to evil and his turning the other cheek to the violent. 
The majority of Christians feel that if his principles and 
example are fully followed at this point they will not work 
successfully. They feel that they must in the last analysis 
resort to military preparation and destructive defensive warfare. 
But let any honest Christian place himself before Jesus on this 
very issue and ask whether the fault lies in the ethical standard 


of Jesus, or that of the world today. Does there not arise at 
least a lurking suspicion that after nineteen centuries of boasted 


*“Pulvis et Umbra,” p. 293. 


176 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


progress it is only our own lack of faith that prevents our 
rising to the heights of his moral sublimity? 

As a fair test, suppose we read again a section more assailed 
than perhaps any other part of his teaching, the first chapter 
of the Sermon on the Mount. Let us measure ourselves by 
his beatitudes: humility, purity and love; or, right relations 
with God, in our own character, and with our fellow-men. Let 
us examine him who comes not to destroy but to fulfill, in the 
five test cases which he offers: 1. No hatred, contempt or con- 
demnation for any human being, but reverence for the per- 
sonality of every man as brother. 2. No look or thought of 
lust for any woman, but reverence for her as sister. 3. No 
arrogant swearing, false or otherwise, but such a reverence for 
God and truth that all human intercourse shall be lifted into 
the sunlight of clear moral integrity. 4. No revenge, even 
though it be the natural demand of legal justice, but the over- 
coming of evil by good and of hatred by love. 5. No hatred 
of friend or enemy, but love even of your enemies that you may 
be sons of your Father whose nature is righteous love and noth- 
ing else. You must therefore aim to be morally perfect, com- 
plete, well-rounded in love, like your heavenly Father himself. 


Does not Jesus himself stand at the moral summit of the 
centuries? Is not his the purest moral consciousness of all 
history? Is it not true that “almost every advance toward 
a larger justice and brotherhood has been due, in past cen- 
turies, to his influence, and in the new perplexities which 
have beset the world men are looking to him, more than to 
any other, for safe direction ?’”? 

5. Jesus centers his teaching in the ideal of the Kingdom 
of God. He took over the hope of a Messianic age current 
among his people, but purified, spiritualized and universal- 
ized it. His conception is far removed even from that of 
John the Baptist, who sees immediately the axe laid at the 
root of the trees which are to be hewn down and cast into 
the fire. The Messiah is to burn the chaff with unquench- 


*E. F. Scott, “The Ethical Teaching of Jesus,” p. xii, and “The 
First Age of Christianity,” pp. 98-102. 

Dr. Klausner thus concludes his “Jesus of Nazareth’: “Jesus is, 
for the Jewish nation, a great teacher of morality and an artist in 
parable. He is the moralist for whom, in the religious life, morality 
counts as everything . . . In his ethical code there is a sublimity, 
distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other 
Hebrew ethical code,” p. 414. % 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 177 


able fire and men are to flee from the wrath of his coming. 

To Jesus, in his first five parables on the Kingdom, it is 
already present as steadily growing seed or silently spreading 
leaven, though slowly progressing toward a future consum- 
mation. Jesus’ view of the Kingdom implies the moral 
organization of mankind, and the final sovereignty of love in 
all the relationships of life. It involves a new social order 
which is at once a Kingdom of God and a commonweal of 
men. For him the Kingdom is at once personal and social, 
present and future, divine and human, ideal and real. It is 
a possible and practicable social order which ultimately can 
come only from God, yet which men can receive and coop- 
erate with, as they pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be 
done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Mr. H. G. Wells, 
naming the six greatest men in history and including Buddha, 
Asoka, Aristotle, Roger Bacon and Abraham Lincoln, places 
Jesus alone at the summit. “The permanent place of power 
which he occupies is his by virtue of the new and simple and 
profound doctrine which he brought—the universal loving 
Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. It is one of the most revolutionary doctrines that 
have ever stirred and changed human thought. . . . The 
world began to be a different world from the day that doc- 
trine was preached.” ? 

Jesus nowhere outlines the details of the Kingdom, yet as 
an actual matter of fact, has it been Plato’s Republic, Moore’s 
Utopia, Bacon’s Atlantis, or Jesus’ conception of seeking first 
the Kingdom of God by doing to others as we would be done 
by, that has furnished the supreme moral, spiritual and 
social hope of mankind? As Washington Gladden suggests, 
has he not planted a social standard on the further side of 
twenty centuries which bids kings, lawgivers, prophets and 
statesmen march on with all their hosts till they attain it? 

6. The fact of Jesus’ death and its results. Men have 
differed widely throughout the centuries as to the interpre- 
tation of Jesus’ death. They have passed from a crude 


» Matt. 13 :1-33; Mk. 4:26-29. 
*The American Magazine, July, 1922, p. 14. 


178 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


pagan conception of a jealous and angry tribal God demand- 
ing the punishment of an innocent victim, like a Shylock who 
must have his exact pound of flesh, or a cruel Kali so much 
human blood. They have outgrown the idea of a ransom as 
a “pious fraud” played by God upon the devil, to whom man 
belonged. Some have seen in Jesus’ cross the fulfilment of 
the cosmic law of sacrifice. They have seen in it the con- 
vergence of two streams of history in man’s long search for 
God, and God’s long search for man, Like the scarlet thread 
that runs through the cordage of the British Navy, they have 
seen this thin red line of sacrifice running through all life. 
From the grass at our feet, the grain of wheat that falls into 
the ground to die that it may bear much fruit, from birth in 
pain, from the slow evolution of a mother, from the death 
of the martyr, prophet, patriot and saint, to the final con- 
summation of sacrifice in the cry, “Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do,’ many have seen this one 
increasing purpose fulfilled in his death. 

But all men’s theories and theologies have never been ade- 
quate to explain the sheer fact of Christ’s death and its 
stupendous results. In simple fact, Jesus died, and in experi- 
ence the lives of men were changed. In the deepest thoughts 
of their hearts, staining their literature and coloring all their 
religions, men had known the fact of sin in the sense of guilt, 
of pollution, of bondage. They now know the experience of 
forgiveness, of cleansing, of freedom. Between the two 
experiences, poles apart, men saw the fact of Jesus’ death, 
explain it as they would. For the sense of guilt there was 
forgiveness, for the feeling of pollution, cleansing, for the 
fact of bondage, freedom. 

Amid a chaos of conflict, of insolent evil and thwarted 
good, of the problem of pain unsolved, of right unrewarded 
and wrong unpunished, the Jew looked to the last judgment 
for the final vindication of God. But as men stood before 
the cross of Christ they saw a better way, not of sin punished 
but borne, not of hatred rewarded but overcome by love, not 
of evil destroyed but converted to good. Perhaps the cross 
was God’s way, not of annihilating evil in anger, but of turn- 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 179 


ing the other cheek to it in long-suffering love. Men looked 
up at the stars and dared to believe God could do anything 
he would. They looked at the cross and dared to believe he 
would do anything he could. In nature they saw God’s 
power, in Jesus’ sacrifice his love. Outlasting a thousand 
theories, some of which we shall later refer to, the fact of 
Jesus’ death remains as man’s possession and inspiration. 

7. Through Jesus men have experienced the meaning of 
resurrection, grasped the hope of life eternal and brought life 
and immortality to light. In the growing materialism of our 
age, when the body has been counted more real and enduring 
than the mind, men have found it increasingly difficult to 
believe in personal immortality. Jesus himself was spared 
no depths of shame, desertion, betrayal or death. His fol- 
lowers, who had deserted him, were dispersed, and his work 
lay in hopeless ruin about his empty tomb. Yet something 
happened. The days that followed upon his death witnessed 
the most wonderful outburst of moral and spiritual energy 
the world has ever known. 

However we may explain it, Jesus’ influence was not only 
not destroyed or lessened after his death, but perpetuated, 
intensified, multiplied, universalized in an inner experience 
now available for all men. However we may account for it, 
multitudes of men in all ages have shared his faith in immor- 
tality, and have built their faith, not on the noble aspiration 
of Socrates or the wavering hopes of Plato, but on the solid 
experience of Jesus risen and alive. Men who had known 
him intimately, like Peter, in whom all hope had died with 
Jesus’ shameful death, were convinced that he lived and that 
they had found new life in him. His worst enemies, like 
Saul of Tarsus, separated from him by gulfs of hatred or 
by widening centuries of time and unbelief, entered into this 
experience of resurrection life. Alike in that age and in this, 
men have awakened to the throbbing energies of a resurrec- 
tion morning. They have found a perennial fountain of new 
life within. It was a life so self-evidencing and spiritually 
validating that it was independent of the visual evidence of 


180 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


an empty tomb or of appearances objective or subjective. It 
was the very inward life of “this same Jesus.” 

Finally, however, Jesus’ greatest gift was himself. More 
important than centering religion for all time in righteous 
love, more even than the truth that God was a loving Father, 
more than his enthusiasm for humanity, greater than the 
proclamation of his highest ethical standards, of deeper sig- 
nificance than his central message of the Kingdom of God, 
greater than the isolated fact of his death or resurrection, 
there remains the all-inclusive fact of Jesus himself. As 
historic fact, as personality, character, example; as an ideal 
realized, as the type of a new spiritual species, as “the like- 
ness of the unseen God’’—as all that he was and is, that 
escapes language, evades definition, and transcends expla- 
nation, Jesus remains the chief possession of the race. He 
is the heart of Christianity. 


The Meaning of Christ 


How, then, shall we interpret hime Perhaps we may not 
be able to do so, like his first followers in their new experi- 
ence so overwhelming and confused. If so, it will in no 
way invalidate that experience as a way of life. Perhaps 
we may have difficulty with the thought-forms and current 
conceptions of the simple dualism of an earlier age—with its 
demons and demon-possession, where Satan played a promi- 
nent part; an age whose people thought it was to end in that 
very generation in a general cataclysm and a sudden appear- 
ing amid cosmic catastrophe. All language is relative. We 
know in part only and our ignorance is abysmal. Jesus does 
not always seem to fit into our ready-made categories, and 
often breaks the molds and bursts past the bounds of our 
thought. 

His Jewish followers first conceived of him as the 
“Anointed” who was to bring in a new age, as the Messiah 
or Christ; yet a crucified criminal and a suffering servant 
seemed to contradict a term that was applied to a military 
conqueror who was to be a son of David, their warrior-king. 
As truly as he was a prophet and more than a prophet, so 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 181 


was he a Jewish Messiah and much more, a whole world’s 
Christ. 

Greek culture approached God through the conception of 
the Logos, at once Reason immanent in the world and the 
uttered Word that revealed his thought. Jesus’ Hellenistic 
followers seized upon this concept and said Jesus was the 
Logos, the thought, the revelation, the Word of God. He 
was the very portrait, the image, the utterance of the unseen 
source of life. The monotheistic Jew, hesitating to apply 
the infinite term “God” to the finite human life of Jesus, yet 
dared to call him at once Son of God and Son of Man. 
Whatever their theology or philosophy, whatever their race 
or national background or prejudice, all his followers who 
had passed from death unto life, from darkness to light and 
from defeat and hopeless despair to the resurrection morn- 
ing of an eternal day of glad discovery, passionately called 
him Savior and Lord. 

All who had eaten and walked with him in the glad Gali- 
lean springtime or in the hunted days of dark Judea knew 
that he was truly man. Yet they felt that he was something 
more. Somehow God was in that life in a unique way. Such 
was the ineffable impression that he made upon them, that 
those men who had eaten and slept with him, had companied 
with him in every circumstance of failure and heartbreak, 
felt ever after that in his eyes they had looked into the very 
heart of God himself. Deliberately in thought, both Jewish 
monotheists and Greek philosophers placed this crucified 
carpenter of Nazareth on the very throne of the universe 
with deity, and summed up their three-fold experience in the 
familiar watchword, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit 
be with you all: so shall it be!” 

Whatever the limits of language, and though confessedly 
we cannot absolutely define either the term “God” or “man,” 
yet in Jesus’ life the divine and human seemed fully to meet. 
Ecce homo: ecce deus. In this life, behold man, behold 
God! 

Truly and utterly human, is he not unique in his incar- 


182 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


nation of the highest that we know of God? Do we not find 
in Jesus the focus of the divine immanence, the throb of the 
divine pulse-beat, the likeness of the divine nature? As 
Archimedes in the new-found enthusiasm of the fresh dis- 
covery of the lever, could cry, “Give me whereon to stand 
and I can move the world,” so with this one pivotal life as 
foundation and fulcrum, we may move our world of nature 
and of man. One thing we know. In him we have found 
life. And the measure of this enlarging life is our light. 

Passionately let us take Jesus as the way. He is our inner 
secret and he our published joy. Beyond all relative words, 
Jesus remains. Beyond all our symbols the mystery and cer- 
tainty still abide—Anointed, Messiah, Christ; Logos, Word, 
immanent Reason and Revelation; Son of Man and Son of 
God; Savior and Lord, “my Lord and my God”; God mani- 
fest and incarnate in a limited and truly human life; crucified 
and risen, temporal and eternal, human and divine—in the 
end of our “Quest of the Historical Jesus,” we still say with 
the beloved physician of the African forest, Albert 
Schweitzer: “He comes to us as one unknown, without a 
name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who 
knew him not. He speaks to us the same words: ‘Follow 
thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfil for 
our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, 
whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the 
toils, the conflicts, the sufferings, which they shall pass 
through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they 
shall learn in their own experience who he is.” 


The Contribution of Paul 


In asking what is Christianity and estimating our debt to 
the past, we turn from Jesus to Paul. In brief, Christ was 
Christianity, Paul interpreted it; Jesus lived the life, Paul 
explained it. Jesus of Nazareth was a man of the country, 
living in the least of all lands; while Paul of Tarsus, Jeru- 
salem, Antioch, Ephesus and Rome, was a citizen of the 
world. His fine Pharisaic Jewish training, his Roman citi- 
zenship, and his Greek language and culture gave him the 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 183 


background which enabled him to interpret Christianity as a 
world religion.? 

In a very early document we have an account of the ap- 
pearance of this remarkable man—“a man of moderate 
stature, with curly (or crisp) hair and scanty, crooked legs; 
with blue eyes; and large knit eyebrows; long nose; and he 
was full of the grace and pity of the Lord, sometimes having 
the appearance of a man, but sometimes looking like an 
angel.’”’® The passion, the energy, the utter divine surrender, 
the rich and tender human friendships of this many-sided 
man of genius, are well illustrated in the successive chapter 
headings of Dr. Jefferson’s “Character of Paul’’—“sincerity, 
sanity, weakness, strength, pride, humility, vehemence, 
patience, courage, courtesy, indignation, tenderness, breadth 
and narrowness, sympathy, thankfulness, joyfulness, trust- 
fulness, hopefulness, love, religiousness, loveableness, great- 
ness,’ 

Let us sum up our debt to him in what he, more than any 
other follower of Jesus, did for Christianity. 

1. Paul interprets Jesus, he explains Christianity, he gives 
us the evangel of the death and resurrection of Christ, he 
proclaims salvation by faith as the heart of the Christian 
message. And he does all this out of the heart of his own 
overwhelming experience. It was his conversion experience 
on the road to Damascus that revolutionized his whole life, 


*In Tarsus and Antioch he learned his cosmopolitanism. ‘Tarsus 
was the center of a famous Stoic school of philosophy, of broad 
Greek culture, of a Roman garrison, gymnasium, stadium and 
theatre from which his later metaphors of racing, boxing and 
soldiering are drawn. Greek was his native speech, though he was 
prepared for the office of a Rabbi, being a Jew of the liberal Dis- 
persion. In Gentile Antioch and elsewhere he labored for fourteen 
formative years with men of all nationalities. ‘He belongs to the 
Graeco-Roman world, but his background is Semitic, and his re- 
ligion is Hebrew. He thus stands at the center of things, equipped 
for the very load he was to undertake, the interpretation of Chris- 
ianity to the heart of the world.” T. R. Glover, “Paul of Tarsus,” 
Senn. E. F. Scott, “The First Age of Christianity,” pp. 123-127, 

2“The Acts of Paul and Thekla” in F. C. Conybeare’s “Monu- 
ments of Early Christianity,” p. 62, quoted in Glover’s “Paul,” p. 172. 

°C. E. Jefferson’s “Character of Paul.” 


184 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


as a volcanic psychological upheaval from his subconscious 
self. He who had stood by at the stoning of Stephen is 
suddenly transformed into Christ’s foremost apostle.* 
Troubled in his zealous course, in agony of mind, he had 
been trying to determine who that crucified Galilean really 
was. He was hunting his followers, believing under the Law 
that “he that is hanged is accursed of God.” Suddenly he 
was met with such an inward revelation of “his Son in me,” 
and an outward radiance that seemed of such reality, that he 
was instantly and forever faced with the fact of the risen, 
living Christ as the chief spiritual force at work in the world. 
But if God was in Christ, and Jesus was a crucified Messiah, 
then it involved a transvaluation of all values, and a revolu- 
tion in his conception of God, of man and of destiny. God 
then was no longer a Pharisaic Lawgiver, but the Father 
whose very nature is revealed in the cross. Jesus is not a 
crucified criminal but the Savior of humanity. Salvation is 
not man’s slavish attainment but God’s free gift to simple 
faith. Thus the face of all the world is changed by one look 
into the reality of Christ. Such is the message of Paul. 
Jesus had proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God and a 
life of moral obedience by which men might enter it. It is 
Paul, chiefly, who thinks out the implications of Christ’s 
person and work as Crucified Messiah, Risen Lord, Savior, 
Son of God, human and divine. The emphasis is now 
shifted from his life and message to the Person of Jesus 
himself. Paul was thus the first Christian theologian. We 
must not think of him primarily as a systematic theologian, 
like Calvin for instance, but as a great Christian throwing 
out his ideas in the heat of conflict and meeting actual situa- 
tions by his letters. His theology always roots in his own 
experience. He bends language to new uses as he lays hold 
on a hundred new terms, sacred or secular, Hebrew or Greek, 
Christian or pagan, to express in manifold metaphors the one 
great central reality of the transformation that had taken 
place in human experience through Jesus Christ. While 


*For the accounts of Paul’s conversion see Acts 9:3-7; 22:4-11; 
26 :12-19; Gal. 1:13-16; 1 Cor. 9:1, 15:8; 2 Cor. 4:6. 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 185 


Paul, like Jesus before him, is seeking to expound no hard 
and fast system of theology, his rich metaphors become the 
basis of all future systems which are crystallized out of them. 
Augustine, and Luther, Calvin and Wesley all build upon 
Paul and draw their systems chiefly from him. It is espe- 
cially from him that the great doctrines of the atonement, 
the resurrection and of justification by faith are drawn. It 
was Jesus who lived the life and died the death. It was Paul 
who explained it.? 

2. Paul, chiefly, separates Christianity from Judaism, un- 
versalizes it, and organizes the Church with its sacraments 
throughout the Gentile world. Wellhausen states the bold 
paradox, “Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew.” Cer- 
tainly he lived and died within the Jewish fold. It is Paul 
who breaks with Judaism, showing that “Christ is the end of 
the law.” Gentiles had been admitted at first as exceptions 
to the Jewish rule. But it was Paul who saw that what had 
been a “way” within Judaism was in reality a radically new 
teligion based upon faith instead of legal obedience, not 
national but universal. Jerusalem under the conservative 
leadership of James stood for the Jewish type, while Antioch 
under Paul became the center of the new Gentile Christianity. 
While Jesus had instituted no formal organization, but pro- 
claimed the universal Kingdom, Paul now organizes the 
Church with its simple sacraments.? 


* Thus Harnack in his “What is Christianity” says, “Paul is the 
most luminous personality in the history of primitive Christianity 
. He was the one who understood the master and continued his 
work. This opinion is borne out by the facts . . . It was Paul 
who delivered the Christian religion from Judaism ... who con- 
ceived the gospel as the message of the redemption already effected 
and of salvation now present . .. It was he who confidently re- 
garded the gospel as a new force abolishing the religion of the 
law .. . who gave it a language, so that it became intelligible, 
not only to the Greeks but to all men .. . Paul brought new 
forces to the Roman Empire, and laid the foundations of Western 
and Christian civilization. Alexander the Great’s work has perished ; 
Paul’s has remained.” “What is Christianity,” pp. 189-192. 

* Scholars now question the authenticity of the only two uses of 
the word “Church” attributed to Jesus by Matthew. In Matt. 
16:17-19 Simon, whom Jesus here calls Satan, minding not the 
things of God, is yet entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom of 


186 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


3. Paul is the apostle of freedom. Based upon the liberty 
with which Christ had set men free, Paul clearly sees and 
maintains freedom from all bondage against the opposition 
of the majority of Jewish Christians. With courageous dis- 
cernment, even against Peter and some of the pillars of the 
twelve apostles, Paul maintains the liberty of Christians, 
whether Jews or Gentiles, from all bondage to law, and from 
the whole spirit of legalism. They are free from the enslav- 
ing conceptions of a legal God, of self-righteous merit, from 
all exclusive race privilege and prejudice, from all hollow 
ceremonial and man-made traditions, from endless disputings, 
contentions and divisions. 

4. Paul becomes Jesus’ greatest follower, his mightiest 
sufferer, the world’s greatest missionary and martyr. Like 
his Master his greatest gift lay in what he was. He was 
“the greatest human being that ever followed Jesus Christ 
and had Christ living in him.’’* His sufferings were colossal 
and his physical constitution must have been made of iron, 
with “five inflictions of the thirty-nine stripes of the Jews, 
three times the Roman beating with rods, three shipwrecks, 
- . . Weariness and painfulness, watching, hunger, thirst, 
cold, nakedness, and endless worry.” 

As a missionary he captured the cosmopolitan centers of 
the Mediterranean world and “turned the whole world upside 
down.” “He kindled conflagrations wherever he went. He 
filled synagogues with commotion, and set cities blazing. . . . 
The New Testament is a witness to his greatness. He wrote 
a quarter of it, and a Gentile physician whom he mightily 
influenced wrote another quarter. . . . The fact is indis- 
putable that Paul understood the mind of Jesus better than 
Heaven, binding and loosing on earth and in heaven in the concep- 
tion of a papal infallibility of a later day. In Matt. 18:16-18 all 
believers in the church are given this power. Prevailingly Jesus is 
occupied with the coming Kingdom of God, Paul with the present 
organization of the church. 

1 Galatians 2:11-21, 5:1-6. 

2?Glover’s “Paul of Tarsus,” p. 197. Out of the fulness of his 
own deep mystical experience Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” a 
hundred and sixty-four times. He exhausts language to tell all he 


had found in him. 
>Glover’s “Paul,” p. 173. 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 187 


did any of the Twelve. . . . He is indeed Paul the Great. 
His name is above every name except the name of Jesus. 
Like his Master he was great because he was the servant of 
all. John Chrysostom wrote a memorable sentence when he 
said of Paul—‘Three cubits in stature, he touched the 
Skvecaen 


The Contribution of Greece and Rome 


In tracing the sources of present-day Christianity we 
must now turn from our brief survey of Judaism, of Jesus 
and of Paul to the Graeco-Roman civilization and the Ori- 
ental mystery religions of the first century. First of all, our 
debt to Greece is incalculable. Two streams combined to 
make the modern world, the Hebrew and the Hellenic. 
Taken alone the Hebrew has often been severe, puritanical 
and ascetic. It has frequently tended to bigotry, intolerance 
and exclusiveness. While the Hebrew alone has thus been 
narrow, the Hellenic by itself has often been broad but 
shallow and superficial. Each was needed to supplement the 
other if we were to see life whole. 

Our debt to the Jew may be summed up in ethical mono- 
theism, our obligation to the Greek in the wide word 
“culture.” The Hebrew gave us depth, the Greek breadth. 
Jewish thought was carried on the wings of Greek language, 
the stiff Hebrew yielding to the pliant Greek, as it provided 
a world-wide medium of ideas, an adequate vocabulary, a 
rich literature, a universal language. The Jew had severely 
sought the good, the Greek discovered the true and the 
beautiful. He found the completion and balance and 
symmetry of life in the beauty of art and of nature, of man 
and of God. 

The Jew taught a stern moral code of grim duty, but the 
Greek opened up new worlds of thought in philosophy. He 
freed man for the psychological discovery of himself within, 
and of the universe without, in the far-flung reaches of free 
thought. He dared to think. To him we trace the origins 
of our science, our philosophy and psychology, our politics, 

* Jefferson, “The Character of Paul,” pp. 370-381. 


188 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


our rational ethics. The Jew gave us the “one thing needful” 
at the spiritual center of life. The Greek taught Paul that 
“all things are yours’—all true teachers, the world itself, 
long abandoned by a severe asceticism as severed from the 
source that pronounced it “good’’; “or life or death, or things 
present or things to come; all are yours.’ 

The Jew taught the value of the “soul.” The Greek 
opened up the possibilities of the whole man in a wide and 
universal humanism. To the Jew we owe our highest gift 
of moral earnestness, but to his spirit, also, the intolerance 
_ of Pharisaic legalism that lingers in us to this day. To the 
_ Greek, chiefly, we owe the attitude of tolerance, of openness 
to new truth, freedom of inquiry, and the later formulation 
of the scientific method. From him we derive our treasured 
independence and individualism. From the Greek rather 
than from the Hebrew we learn the appreciation both of 
nature and of human nature, the wholeness and harmony, 
the richness and complexity, the fulness and synthesis of life. 

There are those who scorn this whole world of culture as 
“secular” or “worldly.” But such was not the spirit of 
Jesus and of Paul. From Antioch to Alexandria, from 
Tarsus to Rome, from the ideas of Paul to the Logos or 
Word of the Fourth Gospel it was Greek thought that shaped 
Jewish religion. Men like Origen and the early fathers 
interpreted their whole Christian experience in terms not of 
Jewish legalism but of Greek philosophy, and in those terms 
they transmitted it. It became, as truly as Old Testament 
Judaism, part and parcel of future “Christianity.” For good 
or ill it was not Jewish or Roman but Greek thought which 
shaped the creeds of Christendom as we have them today. 
But many streams contributed to what we now call Chris- 
tianity. Later, the world needed not only a Reformation of 
conduct but a Renaissance of thought. And we need both 
today if we are to know not only the height and depth but the 
length and breadth and fulness of our faith which claims the 
whole of life in a redeemed universe of the true, the good 


*1 Cor. 3:21-23. 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 189 


and the beautiful. Thus from the Hebrew we received deep 
ethical monotheism, from the Greek broad culture. 

Christianity took over not only Jewish morality and mono- 
theism, Greek thought and culture, but Roman law and 
organization. While it received from Rome much that was 
evil it also learned much that was good. As it faced the 
disintegrating Gnostic and other heresies, the church was 
driven to a deeper solidarity, to present a united and organ- 
ized front. Rome gave the church a wider unity. It main- 
tained spiritual independence against state-omnipotence. It 
maintained the ideal of universality. It gave a leadership of 
great saints from Augustine to Francis. It educated Europe. 
It held to the ideal of a spiritual world empire. 


The Oriental Mystery Religions 


We are well aware of how much both of good and of evil 
we have received from the Jew, the Greek and the Roman. 
Until recently, however, it was not so widely known how 
much both of helpful and harmful influence was received 
from the Oriental mystery religions. The world had been 
prepared for the Christian gospel by Jewish monotheism, 
Greek culture, Roman government and by the pagan “re- 
demption-religions” of the Mediterranean world which 
offered men an individual salvation by the aid of a Savior 
God, or personal regeneration and the hope of immortality 
based upon a divine redemption. The alluring promise of 
the latter offered hope to multitudes of common folk. “For 
over a thousand years the ancient Mediterranean world was 
familiar with a type of religion known as mystery-religions 
which changed the religious outlook of the western world 
and which are operating in European civilization and in the 
Christian church to this day.’ 

Before the birth of Christ the world was growing old and 
men were heart-hungry. The ancient pagan religion of 
Greece was bankrupt, for it was neither rational, moral nor 
spiritual. It had been undermined by anthropomorphic 
mythology, corrupt polytheism, and philosophic criticism. 

1S. Angus, “The Mystery Religions and Christianity,” p. 7. 


190 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Rome had gained the world but lost its own soul. It had left 
its simple, early, family religion, and its cold nationalistic cult 
and flagrant emperor worship offered a stone in place of 
bread. For centuries the mystery religions held sway about 
the Mediterranean and were the chief competitors of Chris- 
tianity in their promise of present salvation and future hope 
to burdened men. 

They had sprung from primitive nature-worship which 
celebrated the rebirth of spring after the death of winter. 
Myths were conceived to incarnate this annual miracle of 
the rebirth of nature in a youthful divinity destroyed, but 
raised to new life and offering salvation to his followers 
through their partaking of his life. These mysteries offered 
a religion of allegory and symbolism, of “‘redemption,” or 
“knowledge” of hidden wisdom, of sacramental partaking of 
the life of the deity by mystic rites, or enacted in moving 
drama, of personal salvation, of group fellowship or cosmic 
brotherhood, and of hope of a blissful life after death. Their 
appeal was powerful. 

Among these religions were the Greek revival of Orphism 
influencing Plato and the great writers of Greece; the 
Persian worship of Mithra, a powerful competitor of Chris- 
tianity which spread through Asia Minor and the Roman 
world, carried along the trade routes by traders, slaves and 
Roman soldiers; the Egyptian cult of Isis, Serapis and 
Osiris, the “dead and resuscitated” god, and various other 
Oriental religions. Some of these cults inculcated a deeper 
sense of sin, they offered a “new birth,” baptism, and a lord’s 
supper of feeding on the body and blood of the man-god, 
divine services, union with the deity, immortality and a mis- 
sionary witness of enthusiasm.? 


* An inscription over a grave after Paul’s time reads, “Born again 
in the baptism of bull’s blood for eternity.” Glover’s “Paul,” 
p. 152. “The Vatican stands today on the spot where the last sacra- 
ment of this Phrygian rite was celebrated.” Angus, Mystery Re- 
ligions, p. 235. According to Edwin Tenney Brewster our religion of 
today is not, as we suppose, based chiefly on the Old Testament, but 
is composed of about equal parts of Pharisaism, Stoicism, Neo- 
Platonism and the common element in all the mystery cults. “The 
early churchman lifted bodily Isis and the infant Horus for his 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 191 


Throughout his missionary journeys Paul came in contact 
with opponents, inquirers and converts who had been initi- 
ated into these pagan mysteries. He saw both the evils and 
the values of their cruder faiths. Their language and ideas 
were in the air. He had to present his gospel not only to 
Jews in terms of a Messiah, but to pagans in the language 
of their mysteries and savior-gods. He used their terms to 
convey new meaning and richer content. The Colossian and 
Ephesian epistles are full of their terminology. Paul had to 
use language his disciples could understand, just as Jesus 
had to use the terms Messiah and Kingdom in a new sense. 
But he bends language to his own uses and brings every 
thought into captivity to Christ. His mysticism is always 
thoroughly ethical and his whole system centers in Christ 
crucified. But he becomes all things to all men. 

Among the terms of these cults which he uses most fre- 
quently is the word “mystery,” which he employs more than 
a dozen times as “something kept secret.” He imparts 
“wisdom” to the “perfect.” He speaks frequently of 
“spiritual” gifts, and of “spirit,” “soul,” “body,” and “flesh” ; 
of two natures or a two-fold personality ; of those who have 
true “knowledge” or are “earthly”; of “revelation,” “trans- 
formation,” of “form” and “image,” of a “spiritual body,” 
of “glory,” and “illumination,” and a whole vocabulary of 
mystic experience.t These Greek terms were much more 
intelligible and helpful to the majority of his Gentile converts 
than were the phrases of the Old Testament. 

But for all the promise they offered to men, the mystery 
religions perished one by one and Christianity survived. 
They failed through lack of monotheism, morality and 
rationality. They were filled with superstition, mythology, 


Madonnas, and Mithra’s birthday for his Christmas. His Trinity 
came from Alexandria.” The early fathers of the church were not 
Jews, but for the most part heathen converted in middle life after 
their ideas were set. None of them ever gave up his philosophy but 
added on his Christian faith and wrote it all into our creeds. “The 
Understanding of Religion,” pp. 127-133. 

+See H. Kennedy, “St. Paul and the Mystery Religions,” pp. 123- 
197, 280-299. 


192 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


astrology and magic. The old orthodox religions had pro- 
posed their thesis, the new mystery religions their antitheses, 
Christianity offered a higher synthesis of fulfilment of all 
that the Law and Prophets, the Graeco-Roman and Oriental 
mystery religions had promised.t Christ was the end for 
them all. Christianity offered Jesus himself and all that we 
owe to him, It gave life. 

In the light of our sources, cannot each one now attempt 
to answer for himself the question, What is Christianity? 
How much of our present-day religion do we owe to Juda- 
ism, to Jesus, to Paul, to Greek thought and the influences 
of the Graeco-Roman world of the first centuries? How 
have the later discoveries of natural science, the advance of 
philosophy and psychology, the fuller realization of democ- 
racy with its new ideas of authority, an awakening social 
consciousness and the conceptions of a new social order 
modified our primitive beliefs? Is Christianity static or pro- 
gressive? Is there still new truth to be discovered? How 
many of the views of traditional orthodoxy have been modi- 
fied by our new knowledge ?? 


+ Gibbon in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” chap. XV, 
attributes the spread of the Christian faith to 1) the enthusiasm of 
the early Christians, 2) their belief in immortality, 3) miracles, 4) 
their high ethical code, 5) compact organization. Angus attributes 
the victory of Christianity to 1) its intolerance and courage, “there 
is none other name under heaven”; 2) its universality; 3) its con- 
quering faith; 4) its vernacular Bible; 5) its satisfying message; 
6) its historic Person, a religion centering in Christ, historic, cruci- 
fied and risen. Others had law, philosophy, creeds, cults and sacra- 
ments, sacrificial bulls and mythical deities. Christianity had Christ. 
He was “the realized ideal,” a fact in the field of history, satisfying 
the “yearnings of the world’s desire.” Angus, “Mystery Religions 
and Christianity,’ pp. 273-314. See also H. Kennedy, “St. Paul 
and the Mystery Religions’; S. J. Case, “The Evolution of Early 
Saeaaa AD: Clemen, “Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish 

ources.” 

2 The following is a statement of the views of traditional orthodoxy 
made by a recent writer: “The historic doctrine of the Trinity— 
three persons in one substance; the creation of the world out of 
nothing in six days by the power of the Almighty; the original per- 
fection of Adam and his subsequent fall, entailing upon all his 
descendants the burden of sin and making ‘them subject not merely 
to physical death but also to punishment in a future life beyond the 
grave; the existence of hell as a place of ever-lasting torment and 


WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 193 


heaven as a place of ever-lasting bliss; the need of a supernatural 
redemption to free men from the eternal consequences of their sin, 
both original and actual; the provision of this redemption by Jesus 
Christ who was both God and man—two natures in one person— 
and who was born of a virgin, suffered, and died that the wrath 
of God might be appeased and men be saved, and who rose again 
from the dead; the requirement of repentance and faith in Christ 
in order to attain salvation; the necessity of a supernatural revelation 
of God’s will and truth that the way of life might be known, and 
of divine help that being known it could be followed: the divine 
inspiration and authority of the Bible; the supernatural origin, 
preservation, and guidance of the Church; the appointment of the 
sacraments as means of divine grace—all this and more was believed 
both by Catholics and Protestants, and it is this common body of 
theology that constitutes the main substance of historic orthodoxy 
and is to be contrasted with modern religious ideas.’ A. C. 
McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” p. 3. 

Dr. McGiffert states above the static and traditional view of 
Christianity, while President King shows the modern view, “A 
Christian man is a man who means first and foremost to be a 
disciple of Christ . . . Christ is truly the supreme revelation of 
God and of the highest life open to men; that is, he can get more 
light and help from Christ than from any other . . . In him we 
have the best life, the best ideals and the surest revealer of God, 
and the greatest persuasive of the law of God; and, therefore, the 
most precious fact in history, the most precious fact our life con- 
tains. The Christian man thus counts Christ as veritable Lord of 
his life . . . He literally lives by Christ, for his highest ideals, 
insights, convictions, motives, faiths and hopes he owes to Christ.” 
“Seeing Life Whole,” p. 134, 


Cuaprer VI 


THE NEW REFORMATION 


The history of the Christian church reveals certain periods 
of spiritual awakening, of religious upheaval or revival, 
such as occurred, for instance, under Francis of Assisi in 
the thirteenth century, under Martin Luther in the sixteenth, 
and John Wesley in the eighteenth.1 Such movements, 
though differing widely in conditions, exhibit certain features 
in common. 

1. Each spiritual awakening began at a time when the 
national or international situation imperatively demanded 
moral renewal. In each case the movement was not an iso- 
lated spiritual phenomenon; it was not solely religious. 
Always there were powerful economic, political or social 
factors in the situation, operating both in the cause and in 
the effect of the reformation. 

2. Each movement arose in a time of depression in the 
religious life. Religion was at low ebb. Abuses, supersti- 
tions, immoralities, pagan practices or worldliness had crept 
into the church’s life. 

3. In each movement there was an effort to return to the 
primitive simplicity of early Christianity. In every awak- 
ening there was in greater or less degree a rediscovery of 
the religion of Jesus. Each movement represented a protest, 
a revolt, a reform, beginning within the church itself, but 
resulting finally in a new departure, a new order, or organi- 
zation. Every movement began with a small group but 
widened in scope until it challenged the forces of organized 
religion of the time, affected the life of the nation and finally 
became a worldwide movement that still persists. The more 
than twenty-five thousand Franciscan “little brothers of the 
poor” working in the world seven centuries after St. Francis, 


1A study of Francis of Assisi, Luther and Wesley will be found 
in three successive chapters in “Makers of Freedom” by Sherwood 
Eddy and Kirby Page, pp. 63-152. 


194 





THE NEW REFORMATION 195 


the hundred and seventy million Protestants and twenty-five 
million Methodists today are only the outward and visible 
reminders of these enduring spiritual movements. The 
world was in some measure changed, and it is different to 
this day because of the devoted groups of men about Francis, 
Luther and Wesley. 

Do we need a new reformation, a religious revival, or a 
spiritual awakening in our day? Let us see if there is at 
the present time any parallel to the conditions mentioned 
above in connection with the three movements we have noted. 
Are there grave moral and social dangers in our national 
life and in the present international situation? Are there 
operative today powerful economic, political or social factors 
which would demand or occasion or condition such an awak- 
ening? Is there need of a spiritual awakening in the 
churches? Is there need today, as in the time of Francis 
of Assisi, Martin Luther or John Wesley, of a rediscovery 
of the religion of Jesus? Is there a call to return to the 
simplicity and power of early Christianity ? 

Our brief survey will cover first of all the national and 
then the religious situation. It is made in no spirit of pessi- 
mism. The very measure of our need is the promise of 
possible relief, just as in the darkest hour before the dawn 
in the great awakenings of the past. If we concentrate for 
a moment upon these needs, we do not forget that there is 
a brighter side to the picture. Not only pages but volumes 
could be written concerning marks of progress and signs 
of encouragement in the present situation.* It is a great 


* Science has harnessed nature to minister to man’s need. Industry 
has made possible the physical basis of the good life for all. Popular 
education has advanced as in no previous age. Democracy as an 
ideal has more widely permeated the world. A social conscience has 
made man more sensitive to the just demands of common humanity. 
There are the beginnings of a world conscience on the evils of war 
and, for the first time in history, a generation is seriously demanding 
peace and devising organizations for arbitration and the judicial 
settlement of international conflicts. A conscience has been aroused 
upon the subject of religion. The demand for reform becomes more 

articulate. Healthily challenged and criticized as never before, men 
are demanding that organized religion shall put its house in order, 


196 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


day in which to live. The very seriousness of the situation 
is only a fresh challenge to faith. In this spirit of hope let 
us examine a few of our outstanding problems. 


Our National Needs 


1. The menace of lawlessness and crime. We need not 
be counted alarmists when the President of the United States, 
the Vice-President, and the Governor of New York State 
have all recently spoken so forcefully upon the serious growth 
of crime in our country.t| The number of deaths due to 
murder in this country now totals over 12,000 a year or over 
thirty a day. That means, in proportion to population, we 
have more than three times as many murders as Italy where 
the Black Hand has been rampant, twenty times the propor- 
tion of Quebec and Ontario, twenty-seven times that of 
Scotland, thirty-seven times that of Holland and over fifty 
times that of Switzerland. 

New York has more than six times as many murders as 
London. Chicago witnessed 563 homicides in 1925, or more 
than three times the number in all England and Wales. 
Robbery is a hundred times as prevalent in Chicago as in 
London. The United States Government has been compelled 
“to contract for the building of 3,000 specially designed 
armored cars for use in the mail service.” 

Our lawlessness in connection with bootlegging and in 


* Herbert Hoover says, “Our dangers today are not economic or 
foreign; they lie in the possible submergence of the moral and 
spiritual by our great material success.” President Coolidge in his 
Memorial Day address at Arlington in 1925 said, “We have another 
problem in Law Enforcement. I read the other day a survey which 
showed in proportion to population we have eight. times as many 
murders as Great Britain, and five times as many as France. Murder 
rarely goes unpunished in Britain or France; here the reverse is 
_ true. The same survey reports many times as many burglaries in 
parts of America as in all England. If we are too weak to take 
charge of our own morality, we shall not be strong enough to take 
charge of our own liberty.” According to the last report from 
77 cities in the United States our record of murders per 100,000 of 
the population has risen to the alarming proportion of 11.1. New 
York Times, April 1, 1926. See Harry Elmer Barnes’ “The Repres- 
sion of Crime,” Doran and Co. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 197 


violation of the eighteenth amendment and the Volstead Act 
constitutes an international scandal. Federal Attorney Buck- 
ner revealed to the Senate Committee investigating the 
prohibition situation that the violators of the Volstead Act 
in New York City constitute an immense army. Complaints 
numbering over 180,000 annually flood police headquarters. 
Mr. Buckner estimates the national bootleg trade at $3,600,- 
000,000 a year, a sum in excess of the annual budget of 
almost every country in the world. Prohibition Commis- 
sioner Haynes reports 177,000 arrests by Federal authorities 
in three years as a small fraction of the total number of 
violations of the prohibition law. 

2. The break-up of the home, the weakening of the insti- 
tution of marriage and the rapid increase of divorce. For 
fifty years the divorce rate in this country has increased 
about three times as fast as the population. While in 1870 
there were 81 divorces per 100,000 of the married population, 
in 1922 there were 330, or an increase of over 400 per cent. 
While in 1900 there were 55,751 divorces in the United 
States, in 1923 there were 165,139. The disintegration of 
the family as the chief primary social group and the creator 
of primary moral ideals must mean national moral deteriora- 
tion. Professor Elwood says, “Divorces have become 
increasingly common, venereal diseases have doubled and 
tripled in the population; while free love, temporary mar- 
riages and polygamy have found ardent advocates.”? 

3. The condition of our youth, It is always easy to blame 
the youth of the day. Age has done so in every generation. 
Whatever be their faults, we believe in our youth and are 
confident that they will yet go beyond their elders in attain- 
ment. What other generation ever had such high-powered 
playthings, such control over nature, such temptations as 

*C, A. Elwood, “Reconstruction of Religion,” p. 21. In 1890 there 
was one divorce ‘for every 16 marriages, in 1923 there was one for 
every 7.5 marriages, an increase of 125 per cent in 33 years. Though 
it does not mean that half our marriages fail, Judge Lindsey shows 
that in our great cities, whereas a few years ago there were one 
quarter as many divorces as there were marriages in a year, at 


present the alarming proportion has risen to one half as many 
divorces as there are new marriages. 


198 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


are afforded by the automobile, the moving picture, the 
radio, increased spending money and leisure? And all this 
comes just at the period when the whole world is in transi- 
tion, following the breakdown of conventional moral stand- 
ards after the war. What other generation ever lived in 
the aftermath of a world war? Whatever be the faults of 
youth, we believe that the chief responsibility lies at the 
door of the members of the older generation who have made 
or marred the home where youth is reared. 

However, after making all due allowance for the rising 
generation, does not the condition of youth as well as of age 
call for a reformation? Judge Lindsey in his “Revolt of 
Modern Youth,” after twenty-six years’ experience in the 
Juvenile Court of Denver with a more intimate relation to 
the young people of that city than any other man, makes 
a study of the youth problem. He believes that Denver 
has a better record than most American cities. He finds, 
however, that among high school students more than 90 
per cent “pet.” Of these, 50 per cent “indulge in half-way 
sex intimacies that wreck the health and morals alike.” 
From 15 to 25 per cent of those who thus begin eventually 
“go the limit.”4 He estimates that there are a million and 
a half abortions annually in the United States. He shows 
that the vast majority of the youth are given no healthy sex 
education either in the home or the church or the school. He 
traces the trouble to the disintegration of home life, to igno- 
rance, and to “our parrot system of education,’ which 
instead of teaching the young to think for themselves, makes 
them slaves of mass sentiment. They act and think within 
the limits “of certain shifting codes and traditions which 
they have created for themselves.” They have departed 
“en masse from ancient traditions.” 

Although holding the older generation chiefly responsible, 
Professor Coe, as a defender of the youth of our day, 
admits their “craze for excitement ; immersion in the external 
and superficial; lack of reverence and of respect; disregard 
for reasonable reticence in speech; conformity to mass senti- 


*“Revolt of Modern Youth,” pp. 56-64, 107, 286. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 199 


ment—‘going with the crowd’; lack of individuality; living 
merely in the present, and general purposelessness.”’ 

4, Our present industrial order. Conditions furnish a 
situation in some respects similar to that which made neces- 
sary the evangelical revival in Wesley’s day. The highly 
organized industrial system of our machine civilization has, 
in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, given to some “the means of becom- 
ing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” It has increased 
production so that the means of a good life with comforts 
and even simple luxury might be shared by all. Within 
the last decade the United States has become the leading 
industrial nation of the world. But this prosperity has been 
purchased at the price of the industrialization of much of our 
life. It has brought unprecedented profits for a few and 
the dull mechanization of life for the many. It tends to. 
crush out the higher life of the workers, intellectual, aesthetic 
and religious. 

This mechanization of life creates a chasm between owners 
and wage earners, and also between work and leisure, so 
that men go out to seek exciting pleasures to offset the dead- 
ening routine of industry. It tends in many cases to the 
weakening of family ties, or the break-up of the home. The 
present industrial system makes possible an enormous concen- 
tration of power in the hands of a few. 

The capitalization of the corporations in the United States 
concentrates the enormous financial power of over a hundred 
billion dollars. These corporations in 1919 employed 86 
per cent of the industrial wage earners of the country. The 
majority of the workers have no land, no home of their 
own, no tools, no security of life or employment. The many 
toil, the few own or effectively control their means of liveli- 
hood and conditions of life. This reacts upon labor where 
we often find inadequate leadership, a lack of high idealism, 
and a tendency to rely upon methods of coercion and force. 

All this leads to serious unrest and industrial strife. In 
West Virginia, for instance, over wide areas of the state, 
the employers generally own the coal beneath the soil, the 
surface of the ground, the houses of the workers, the 


200 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


churches, the schools, the company stores; they practically 
control the press and the law—everything save the clothes 
on the worker’s back and his furniture which can be put out 
into the street at a few days’ notice, according to the terms 
of the contract which places him almost completely at the 
employer’s mercy.t No wonder Dr. John A. Ryan, an expert 
on social conditions in this country, says, “As we survey 
present conditions and the unmistakable trend of political 
and economic forces . . . after more than three centuries 
there approaches a return to feudalism.’ 

5. The extremes of unshared wealth and unrelieved pov- 
erty. America has now become the richest country in the 
world, possessing approximately one-third of all the wealth 
and about half of the gold supply of the world. Mr. Hoover 
reminds us that during the last half century, while our popu- 
lation has more than doubled, our national wealth has multi- 
plied tenfold. For sixty years to come other leading nations 
are obliged to pour their surplus into our treasury in payment 
of their national debts. According to the report of the 
Federa! ‘irade Commission in 1926, our national wealth is 
approximately $400,000,000,000, or more than the combined 
wealth of Great Britain and France. It is now increasing 
at the rate of 16 per cent a year. One per cent of the estates 
in the United States possess 59 per cent of the total wealth.® 

*See Report of Senate Commission on West Virginia and Win- 
piel D. Lane, “The Denial of Civil Liberties in the Coal Fields,” 
pp. 5-46. 

* La Follette Magazine, March, 1926, p. 41. 

* Report of Federal Trade Commission summarized by Stuart 
Chase, N. Y. Times, June 6, 1926. The report of the commission 
shows that less than one-third of those who died left a house to 
live in; “we are becoming a nation of tenants.” The average indi- 
vidual whose will was not probated left only $450. While em- 
ployees comprise 7.5 per cent of the stockholders of all companies 
they own but 1.5 of the common and less than 2 per cent of the 
preferred stock. On the other hand in examining the ownership of 
natural resources the commission concludes that the facts “indicate 
a distinct concentration of control in the hands of a few large com- 
panies.” If it is asked who owns America, the commission shows 
that already in 1922 six companies controlled one-third of the water 
power of America; 8 companies control over three-quarters of the 


anthracite; 2 companies control over half the iron ore deposits and 
4 companies control nearly one-half of the copper deposits. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 201 


At the top of the scale we find less than five hundred 
families possessing from twenty million dollars each up to 
a maximum of a billion. Some 7,442 families, or one in 
3,406, receives an annual income of $100,000 or more. 
Out of twenty-five million heads of families in the United 
States only 10,512,716, or less than half, received an income 
as high as $1,500, or about four dollars a day per family. 


At the bottom of the scale are some ten millions in poverty.’ di 


Stuart Chase estimates the average number of unemployed 
in this country on a given working day as six million. 

The results of poverty are written in the lives of crushed 
humanity—crowded tenements, unsanitary surroundings, 
congested and demoralized family life, sickness, child labor, 
mothers forced into industry, ignorance and low mentality, 
untrained and undesirable citizenship, growing class hatred 
of masses sodden with misery and despair. 

Let us here mention only one of these concomitants of 
poverty, which has become a scandal in America, bad hous- 
ing. In 1919 there were over a million marriages in the 
United States, yet only 70,000 homes were built. One 
authority states that “one-third of the people of the United 
States are living under subnormal housing conditions . 
and about one-tenth are living under conditions which are 
an acute menace to health, morals and family life.’’* Gov- 
ernor Smith’s State Commission on Housing reports that 
only 3 per cent of the apartments recently built are within 
reach of 70 per cent of the population, while two-thirds 
of the families “are afforded no decent place in which to 
live.’’* 

1 National Bureau of Economic Research, Income in the United 
States, p. 136. 

7See estimates of Russell Sage Foundation, Robert Hunter, Pro- 
fessor Parmelee, and J. S. Penman. 

*F. E. Wood, “The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earners,” p. 7 

“Contrast these conditions in New York, the richest city in the 
world, with those in Vienna, which five years ago in its starvation 
probably was the poorest. In that city today 2,600 neat cottages 
and 30,000 apartments are being built for the poor. Here were 
commodious apartments with fresh air and sunlight with outdoor 


playgrounds and an indoor gymnasium, a fountain, a swimming pool 
filled with healthy, happy children, a hall for recreation and enter- 


202 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


In the noisome slums of New York are 270,000 darkened 
tenement rooms that never see one ray of direct sunlight all - 
the year round. Here over 600,000 are living in tenements 
that were built without intelligence and without conscience 
under a system dominated by the motive of private profit 
and almost unlimited competition. It is every profiteer for 
himself and the devil take the poor. An investigation made 
in one of the poorer areas of New York showed that over 
90 per cent of the children were suffering from malnutrition 
or were not fully normal and healthy in body and mind. As 
our Federal Commission of Industrial Relations points out, 
it is from these crushed and distorted bodies and minds that 
the army of vice and crime which now threatens our national 
life is recruited. Here in less than two square miles in the 
slums of the East Side of New York two millions of the 
poor are herded, while just over the river are thirty-two 
miles of healthy open space largely unutilized. 

Thomas Carlyle would warn us today of this stunted 
dweller of our slums lest “the lamp of his soul should go 
out. As he sits in haggard darkness, like two spectres Fear 
and Indignation bear him company,” while his soul lies 
“blighted, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated.” 

Here are luxury and poverty side by side in glaring con- 
trast. In a single year the prosperous in the United States 
have saved more than ten billion dollars.1 More than half 
of this was added to the wealth of Protestant church mem- 
bers who are the most prosperous section of the community.? 
According to the Secretary of the Treasury, in an average 


tainments, and a score of other conveniences. These apartments 
are rented to the poor at from one dollar to two dollars a month. 
Each apartment costs the city some $1,700. Its economic rent 
would be about $8.50 a month, but by an equitable distribution of 
taxes the poor are provided with dwellings within their reach. 
*Federal Trade Commission Report, New York Times, June 6, 


* Reinhold Niebuhr in the June “Atlantic Monthly” points out that 
Protestant nations are at once more honest and more greedy than 
their neighbors; and that Protestantism is the main root of the 


modern capitalistic spirit. Europe is so deeply in debt to the United 


States that she can repay our loans only by reducing the standard of 
living in the various nations for generations. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 203 


year like 1919, as a nation we wasted in luxuries nearly 
twelve billion dollars in joy riding and pleasure automobiles, 
in luxury services, in costly apparel, tobacco, perfumery, 
jewelry, candy, chewing gum, etc.* 

6. The materialism of our age constitutes another call for 
a new reformation, or a revival of religion. Material things, 
instead of being the simple means of life, have become its 
end, its standard of measurement, its god—Mammon. Mr. 
Bok, as a successful business man, well characterizes our 
era in his “Dollars Only,” holding up a “Stop, Look, Listen” 
sign for our times: There was a time when the monasteries, 
the church or the absolutist monarch ruled the destinies of 
men. Now, “money is King. Business is our God. Com- 
merce tules. . . . The captain of industry is . . . the captain 
of the souls of peoples.’* He concludes, “the fall of the 
house is not afar off.” 

By its very nature, our industrial order produces and 
emphasizes material possessions. It relies upon competition 
and the spur of the profit motive. It produces the two 
classes of owners and dependent wage-workers, with the 
exploitation of the dependent. The age of science that 
harnessed the forces of nature which might have provided 
secure and abundant means of subsistence for all the peoples 
of the earth, has not done so even for the toilers themselves 
in the most prosperous industrial countries. What was once 
a brave struggle with nature has been turned into an 
ungenerous struggle between men. 

Competition for profit becomes the method and property 
the end of our industrial life. The human factors, the 
workers, are organized as means for the material factors 
as ends. “Things are in the saddle and ride men.” Human- 
ity becomes the means, materialism the end. All industry, 
all society, all political action and legislation, are shaped to 
this end. The effective demand for industrial reform has 
been successfully averted by the weakening of trade unions 
in every western country. The abolition of child labor has 

1Mr. Stuart Chase in “The Tragedy of Waste” sums up the 


appalling record of our waste as a nation. 
“Dollars Only,” p. 4 


204 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


been indefinitely postponed and the protection of minimum 
wage laws for women nullified. Christian employers have 
“conscientiously” placed barriers across the pathway of 
reform, just as did the vested interests in church and state, 
in the Lords and Commons, for a century obstruct every 
proposal for reform made by Lord Shaftesbury and others 
in England. 

The war stabbed us awake with its ten million deaths. 
Relatively speaking, we all saw and felt it. What most of 
us do not see or feel is that, not so dramatically or obviously 
but none the less literally, our present social order in time 
of peace is causing more poverty, more wounded and crippled 
lives and more deaths than the world war ever did. This 
takes place, not so dramatically concentrated in a brief space 
and time “at the front” under the searchlight of the thrilling 
reports of our most brilliant war correspondents, but unno- 
ticed among the forgotten multitudes in lonely tenements 
where we do not know “how the other half lives.” Most of 
us know less of the slums of our own city than we know 
of the real situation in China or Africa. Our daily paper 
may bring us pictures of the north pole or happenings across 
the ocean by radio, but it does not tell us of the slums of 
our own city. 

Differ as we may in details, is there not overwhelming 
evidence of the need of reformation in our national life in 
view of our record of crime and lawlessness, unmatched by 
any other civilized country today, the increase of divorce, 
the menace to the most fundamental social institution of 
marriage and the home, the condition of youth, our mecha- 
nized industry, our congested wealth and poverty, our 
profligate waste and our gross materialism? Do not all speak 
with one voice of our need of a nation-wide reformation ?* 

*In the summary concluding the pamphlet, “Danger Zones of the 
Social Order” and in the final chapter of “Makers of Freedom,” 
we have said, “Let us now gather together in summary form some 
of the dangers with which our society is confronted, economic perils 
due to gross inequality of privilege, with extreme luxury for some 
and dire physical need for many, disgraceful housing conditions in 


many cities and industrial communities, concentration of vast finan- 
cial power in the hands of interlocking directorates, widespread in- 


THE NEW REFORMATION 205 
A Reformation of Religion 


Let us now ask whether the forces of organized religion 
are prepared to be the chief agency of such a reformation 
or whether they are themselves in need of reform. The 
religious reformations of the past arose in times of great 
spiritual depression out of man’s basic need of vital religion. 
Because of some fundamental demand of his nature man 
seems to be “incurably religious.” If vital religion is the 
most important experience of life, the church is the most 
important of man’s institutions. It exists for worship, for 
character and for work. But like all organizations it has 
its cycles of rise and decline and renewal. There is a periodic 
need of reform in the state and of reformation in the church. 
As Hegel well says, the idea gives birth to the institution; 
then the institution tends to strangle the idea. No organiza- 
tion faces this danger so much as organized religion. Neces- 
sarily, as the conservator of value and the bearer of tradition, 
it seeks to hold fast that which is true. But in so doing it 
tends almost inevitably to hold the outward form while 
failing to maintain the inward spirit. A religion that cannot 
creatively meet the vital need of the times will atrophy. The 


dustrial strife and violence, the spy system in industry, decreasing 
‘supplies of raw materials, increasing foreign competition, the steady 
growth of class-consciousness, the deliberate stimulation of new 
physical desires on a great scale by advertising, industrial waste, the 
dehumanizing effects of monotonous toil in factories and shops, and 
the rapid spread of materialism; international dangers arising out 
of the increasing destructiveness and deadliness of modern war, the 
growth of industrialism throughout the earth and consequent intensi- 
fication of competition between the various nations for food, raw 
materials, markets and fields of investment, exaggerated and irre- 
sponsible nationalism, and the prevalence of militarism; racial perils 
due to discrimination, exploitation, lynching, and mob violence; 
political perils due to graft and corruption, ignorance and inefficiency, 
the denial of civil liberties, indifference of voters, and the magnitude 
and complexity of the problems requiring solution; moral dangers 
due to crime and lawlessness, a million drug addicts, two hundred 
thousand prostitutes, eight million victims of venereal diseases, 
sordid commercialized amusements, the growth of obscene literature, 
the deterioration of the home, the increase in divorce, the presence 
of twenty million children and young people who are not receiving 
systematic religious instruction—these are some of the perils with 
which we are confronted.” 


206 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


world is strewn with dead religions and effete denominations, 
When religion loses its creative spirit and substitutes for 
spontaneous vitality an external authority from the dead 
past, it becomes an enemy of progress. The ideals of the 
past become the tyrannies of the present. Outwardly, at 
least, there would seem to be signs of encouragement in the 
status of organized religion. The total Christian community 
in the United States now numbers 48,224,014, of whom 
roughly twenty-nine million are Protestants and nearly 
nineteen million are Catholics,? 

If we look beneath the surface of these statistics, however, 
it would seem that there is need of a new reformation. Does 
not an analysis of the situation reveal among others the 
following outstanding religious needs? 

1. Lack of growth in the church. Can we rest content 
with mere numbers of nominal Christians without further 
examination? How far are these statistics for both Catholics 
and Protestants inadvertently padded? How many of the 
lists of the local churches are up to date and represent present 
vital membership? How many of those on the rolls regu- 
larly attend church? How many of them have enough vital 
religion to affect their daily lives in real communion with 


1Dr. H. K. Carroll in reviewing the growth of Christianity in the 
United States 1900 to 1925 shows that there have been added to the 
church 19,500,000 communicants, 72,677 Ministers, 46,159 church 
buildings. The value of the present 236,964 church buildings is 
$2,000,000,000. There has been an increase of 1,846 church buildings 
a year. During the quarter century the communicant members of 
the churches have almost doubled. Between 1900 and 1925 the mem- 
bership of Protestant churches in foreign missions fields more than 
doubled. We are standing at the close of the greatest missionary — 
century since the apostolic. era. Between 1800 and 1925 the number 
of foreign missionaries increased from 15,000 to 30,000, the com- 
municany members from a million and a quarter to three and a half 
millions, not including several million baptized adherents. More 
than 500,000,000 Bibles were issued during the last century in 600 
languages. About one third of the population of the world today is 
nominally Christian: Protestants number 170,900,000; Roman Catho- 
lics 273,500,000; Orthodox Catholics 121,801,000; Total number of 
Christians, 566, 201, 000; Total Non- Christians, 1,053, 563,000; World’s 
Population, 1,619, 764, 000. See New York Tribune, April’ 30, 1926, 
p. 7; The Christian Herald, April, 1926; Garfield Williams in “Out- 
line "of Christianity” ; World Almanac, 1926. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 207 


God and effective service for men? There was no lack in 
numbers that crowded the temple courts, or orthodox believ- 
ers who attended the synagogues in Jesus’ time, yet he said 
that tax-gatherers and harlots would enter the Kingdom 
before some of them. There was no lack in millions of 
nominal Christians and amassed wealth in church buildings 
amid gross sins and superstitions at the time of St. Francis 
or of Martin Luther, nor in the churches that closed their 
doors against Wesley simply because he preached the 
Christian gospel. 

What impact are these Christians making upon society 
about them? No task is more important than that of religious 
education. Is the church reaching the youth of the nation 
today? Taking the rising generation as a whole, apparently 
seven out of every ten children in the country are not being 
touched by any religious program, Protestant, Catholic or 
Jewish. According to Professor Walter S. Athearn, “There 
are in the United States over 58,000,000 people, nominally 
Protestant, who are not identified in any way with any 
church, either Jewish, Protestant or Catholic. There are 
over 27,000,000 American children and youth, nominally 
Protestant, under 25 years of age, who are not enrolled 
‘in any Sunday school or cradle-roll department and who 
receive no formal or systematic religious instruction. There 
are 8,000,000 American children, nominally Protestant, under 
10 years of age, who are growing up in non-church homes. 
There are in the United States 8,676,000 Catholic children 
and youth under 25 years of age. Of this number ... 78.4 
per cent are not in religious schools. There are in the United 
States 1,630,000 Jewish children and youth... of whom 
95.2 per cent are not in religious schools.”* 

In so far as the forty-eight million Christians in the United 
States represent something more than mere names on a 
church roll they are supposed to be living witnesses. But 
let us compare the ratio of new converts to the number of 
Christians in the year book of the Federal Council of 
Churches. Each year it averages about one to forty of the 


“Character Building in a Democracy,” pp. 24, 26. 


208 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


total Protestant membership. That is, even including the 
majority received from the home and the Sunday School 
into the church, and the people who follow in the wake of 
the great professional evangelistic campaigns, if takes an 
average of forty Christians a year to win one addition to 
the church. Or, to put it differently, it takes one Christian 
forty years, or a life time, to win one convert. But as a 
matter of fact, the majority are reached through the home, 
the Sunday School and the evangelistic campaign. If we 
omit these and prune our statistics, it would be a most 
generous estimate to say that it takes a hundred Christians 
to win one convert a year. And what kind of a Christian 
is this added member? In how many cases is he a real 
follower of Jesus and of his way of life? 

2. The lack of power in the church. This is more serious 
than the lack of growth. We must turn from the easier test 
of quantity to the more searching condition of quality. What 
special quality of personal life and character is organized 
religion producing today? ‘The test offered for Christianity 
by its Founder was one of behavior. It was to be known 
by its fruits, in character and service. Its light was to 
shine that men might see. There was to be an unanswerable, 
ever-present argument of things new as well as old, of what 
men could “see and hear.’ Christianity was to be judged 
by its ability measurably to reproduce the life and spirit of 
Jesus, not pale and ever weaker dilutions, but even “greater 
works” than at the beginning. Early Christianity could 
cast out the “demons” of its day and make abnormal and 


deformed men whole. Can it cast out the demons of the 


“eee modern world? Mr. Chesterton’s brilliant epigram that 


Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but has 
been found difficult and not tried, is true. Why has it not 
been tried after nineteen centuries? Is it so unappealing to 
the world, or has the church shown such a caricature of the 


original that few have wanted to try it? The test of Phari- 


saism was correct doctrine, but that of Jesus was a way of 
life. How far have we lived that way of life in business? 
How far have we Christianized industry? How far is it 


THE NEW REFORMATION 209: 


motivated by Christiay service and how far dominated by 
pagan profit today? To what extent have we Christianized 
our race relations, our lynching, our attitude to Negroes, to 
Japanese and other foreigners? To what extent have we 
Christianized our international relations? In this enlightened 
twentieth century, to “settle’’ our last international dispute 
we left twenty-six million combatants and noncombatants 
dead. 

3. Our denominational divisions. To say that there are 
forty-eight million Christians in America sounds impressive. 
But we find only one church united throughout the world, 
and that under an external authority. The Protestant 
churches in this country are shattered into over a hundred 
and eighty sects. If these were merely convenient groupings 
like the Friends, we would covet no mere external uniformity. 
But our divisions go deeper than that. Almost every con- 
ceivable doctrine, important or trivial, has been made the 
basis of some sect. Almost every form, or sacrament, or 
method of worship has been the occasion of fresh division. 
Almost every polity or method of church government has 
been the basis of another denomination. Even where we 
are agreed upon doctrine, form and polity, we are compelled 
to perpetuate our humiliating sectional divisions between 
north and south, under the threat of ecclesiastical leaders 
that, if Christians unite, the time might conceivably come 
when some white Christians, somewhere, might have to 
receive the symbol of the broken body of Christ from some 
colored bishop or minister. This divided front is maintained 
abroad, even where the indigenous Christians in mission 
fields do not understand or desire to perpetuate our denomi- 
national differences. Our divisions are perpetuated at home 
in little communities, where waste, overlapping, friction and 
loss of spiritual power are the result of our propagated 
sectarianism. How far do our denominations fulfill the 
prayer of the Master “that they all may be one, that the 
world may believe”? Just how far does the world believe 
in our religion as vital? Would the world today have any 
doubt as to our desperate need of a new reformation? 


210 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


4. Party strife and faction. At the hour when we face 
the challenge of an unprecedented world situation, when 
there is a crying need for a spiritual revival in the church 
and the nation, instead of being united by loyalty to a com- 
mon Lord in the execution of our common task, we find 
the church today is wasting its strength in internal dissention. 
Our denominations are divided between “arid liberalism” 
and “acrid fundamentalism.” What partisanship shall we 
follow as between fundamentalists and modernists? Shall 
we choose loyalty to the truth as tested in the experience of 
the past, or an open-minded seeking of new truth and an 
application of the best that we know to the changed condi- 
tions of the present? Why not do both? Why need loyalty 
to the past make us disloyal to the present? Why should 
openness to new truth blind us to that which is old? Is not 
every true disciple of the Master to bring forth daily out 
of his treasure “things new and old’? It was for these 
“things new” that Jesus was crucified. 

Where did he ever make orthodoxy of opinion the test 
of discipleship when he himself was crucified as the chief 
heretic of his day? Can we imagine Jesus demanding as 
his supreme test of those first fishermen by the lakeside, or 
of the young ruler, or of the twelve on the last night, or of 
his followers today, whether they believe properly in God 
as a substance existing in three hypostases, manifested in a 
Son possessing one person, two wills, a human nature con- 
substantial with humanity and a divine nature consubstantial 
with deity; in “two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, 
invisibly, inseparably” united in correct metaphysical rela- 
tions? Can we imagine him saying that unless these fisher- 
men intellectually believed rightly about these things they 
could not be saved? If this had been his teaching, would 
the world have wasted time upon it; would it have survived 
for us even to hear of it? And yet for centuries men have 
not only died for these things, but have put one another to 
death for them. They have tried, judged, persecuted and 
burned at the stake those who differed from them in opinion. 
Often the issues were upon questions which Jesus had never 


THE NEW REFORMATION 211 


mentioned and were the poles apart from everything for 
which he had lived and died.* 

The field is open today to enter a quarrel of doctrinal 
strife or to follow Jesus’ way of life. The world is growing 
impatient with both sides in the present controversy. Judged 
by Jesus’ standard of love, by their fruits, by their results 
in character and service, by unity such that the world may 
believe, is either party succeeding? How many arid modern- 
ists are rational, cold, critical, and destructive with no positive 
life or dynamic message of good news? How many acrid 
fundamentalists are harsh, unloving, unforgiving, and often 
unwittingly untruthful in the misrepresentation of their 
fellow Christians who differ from them? As in the hour of 
defeat before the gaping multitude with the sick unhealed, 
must not both say with the disciples of old, “Why could not 
we cast it out?’ Does not the whole religious situation 
today demand, not that we join either party in strife, but 
that we seek to follow Jesus’ way in love? 

The new reformation that we seek must be one of love. 
And that love will be an idle sentiment if it does not include 
not only the distant pagan, but the near-by Christian. This 
“is not to say that doctrines do not count, that we can intel- 
lectually agree with everyone, or that we can slur over all 
distinctions. But it is to say that love counts even more. In 
Christ such love will know neither Jew nor Greek, neither 
Catholic nor Protestant, neither white nor black, neither 
national nor foreigner, neither fundamentalist nor modernist. 
Is it not true that Jesus stood for the eternal spiritual funda- 
mentals? Is it not equally true that he was so utterly modern 
that it placed him in opposition to all the constituted external 
authorities of his day? In so far as we are true followers 
of his, can we not rise above the battle of party strife, deter- 
mine to understand one another, and even where we ourselves 
are misunderstood or misrepresented, persistently maintain 
the attitude which “beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things”? 


1We have discussed in the appendix “Doctrine and the New 
Reformation.” 


212 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


5. The unbelief, the scepticism and agnosticism of our 
time. Even a confirmed optimist, who is not in the least 
an alarmist, who believes that doubt is often a necessary 
transitional phase in thought, and who sees in the whole 
situation a stimulating challenge to faith, cannot be blind to 
certain dangers of the time. Today literally everything is 
challenged and questioned—God, man, the soul, the mind, 
personality, religion, morality, marriage, the church, the 
state, the social order. Whatever else it is, ours is not an 
“age of faith.” Doubts are raised in every branch of study 
and every area of life. We are not now referring to the 
fact that equally earnest Christians may differ on scientific 
questions such as relativity or evolution, as to whether God 
made the world suddenly or gradually. But there is a dog- 
matic denial of God in many a college classroom, in the 
teaching of a rationalistic science that is not only irreligious 
but unscientific as well. And there are even more effective, 
subtle influences to undermine religious faith. In psychol- 
ogy, as we have seen, there are many mechanists who deny 
God, many reverent agnostics who have lost what faith they 
ence had, and a much larger number of students who are 
swept away in temporary doubt or settled unbelief because 
there is no one to help them who combines the modern 
scientific viewpoint with a vital religious experience. In 
philosophy many have been led into unbelief by a left-wing 
pragmatism tinctured with mechanistic behaviorism, by posi- 
tivism, phenomenalism, or some form of naturalism or mate- 
rialism. In the ranks of youth some have lost their intel- 
lectual anchorage or their moral standards and are frankly 
adrift on uncharted seas. Even in the church, many have 
lost their faith, The Rev. Thomas Hardy recently stated 
“The Predicament of Christianity.” He says in substance 
that since there is no God (apart from nature and man) 
and no soul, since there is no sin and no Savior from sin, 
what have we to offer? What indeed for those who have 
lost their great spiritual heritage of the past? 


+See the Hibbert Journal for October, 1925, “The Predicament of 
Christianity.” 


THE NEW REFORMATION 213 


All this may afford a cheap occasion for pessimistic 
ranting against all modern science. It should be rather a 
new challenge to faith. Here is a generation which has 
had to face, as no other generation in history, a new world 
of thought in every department of science, religion, morals 
and society. May we not offer to those in honest doubt the 
humble testimony of a joyous experience that combines the 
scientific attitude with religious faith? Does not the need 
of youth and the unbelief of our time constitute a challenge 
for a new reformation? 


The Need of Reformation Abroad 


Let us see if a brief survey of organized Christianity in 
foreign mission fields as well as at home, indicates a need of 
reformation. 

The first effect of the foreign missionary crusade of the 
nineteenth century was not only the rapid Christianization, 
but also the westernization of the converts. Missionaries 
were sent with great enthusiasm from the “Christian” occi- 
dent to the “heathen” orient. The superiority of our civi- 
lization was assumed at home and unchallenged abroad. We 
possessed modern inventions, organization, education and 
the absolute religion, Christianity. Our apologetic often 
rested on the beneficial results of our religion to the rich, 
prosperous and superior “Christian” nations. The mis- 
sionary crusade that began in 1886 at Northfield took as its 
watchword “The Evangelization of the World in This Gen- 
eration.” More than ten thousand students went out to 
foreign lands as missionaries. A million or more new con- 
verts were gathered. 

But we are standing at the beginning of a decade when 
the whole missionary enterprise is being challenged to its very 
foundations and when it is forced to pass through a trying 
period of transition. There are two outstanding features. 
affecting this transition: 1. the rise of a new nationalism and 
a revival of indigenous cultures and religions in every foreign 
land; 2. a searching criticism of our whole western civiliza- 
tion and of our social order with its conquering and exploit- 


214 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


ing militarism, imperialism and industrialism. Let us briefly 
examine these factors to see if they involve any demand for 
reformation. 

1. The new nationalism. This is noteworthy in every 
modern section of Asia and Africa. The nationalism of 
Japan is perhaps the strongest in the world. India under the 
leadership of Mr. Gandhi, the Philippines, Korea, Egypt, 
Mesopotamia, Syria and other lands, are demanding either 
complete independence or full self-determination. 


China is typical of other countries. For a generation and 
more, after having to fight two opium wars, peaceful China 
retreated before the advance of western imperialism, militarism 
and industrialism. Some of her choicest ports, islands and por- 
tions of provinces were seized by foreign powers and “zones” 
of influence and exploitation were marked out in the remainder 
of the country. Foreigners fixed China’s tariffs and customs, 
established their own law courts, took the best ‘‘concessions” 
and parks in their cities and organized modern industry. Al- 
though their wages and conditions were better than in most 
of the Chinese mills, the workers in the factories were among 
the poorest paid in the world.*. In a strike in one of the foreign 
mills a Chinese worker was shot and killed. Some students 
who protested were put in jail. A fresh company of students 
demanding their release was fired upon on May 30, 1925, ten 
or eleven were killed and a larger number wounded. The flash 
of these foreign rifles was the spark that fell in the tinder of 
China’s new nationalism. The leaders of a whole nation of four 
hundred millions blazed with the same indignation that char- 
acterized America in 1776. A nation went on strike, demanding 
the abrogation of all unjust and unequal treaties that had been 
imposed upon them. An anti-Christian campaign, as part of a 
student Renaissance movement, challenged the alleged alliance 
of organized religion with this hated exploitation of imperialism, 
militarism, industrialism and capitalism, 


This new burning nationalism is powerfully affecting not 
only international relations but foreign mission work in the 
length and breadth of Asia and is now permeating Africa. 

2. The searching criticism of Western civilization. Al- 


*See survey of industrial conditions in China compared to nine 
other countries in “The New World of Labor,” by the author, 
Chapter 1. In one factory, making a profit of 100 per cent a year, 
little girls of 12 were paid three and four cents a day. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 215 


though the process is painful at the moment, one of the best 
results of foreign missions may be the turning of the search- 
light of criticism upon our social order, enabling us to see 
ourselves through the eyes of the Eastern world. Thousands 
of foreign students who have been studying in our midst 
have faithfully reported just what they have found to their 
respective countries. Take the single item of our race 
prejudice and race relations. We talk of a “yellow peril.” 
The orient experiences a white peril that has already seized 
nine-tenths of the habitable globe, and either conquered or 
exploited over half of Asia and all but one-thirtieth of the 
continent of Africa. In city after city of South Africa, the 
Negro, though he may be an American college graduate, is 
not allowed to walk on the sidewalks in his own country, but 
is herded with the cattle in the street. 

Our practice of lynching our citizens of another race is a 
positive hindrance te our work in Christian mission fields. 
It is well known and constantly mentioned in the press of 
these countries that America is the only nation that descends 
to this barbarous practice. 

On the writer’s last trip around the world, he found the 
news of the latest lynching in this country not only printed 
in the secular press and the Christian papers of China and 
India, but also a hideous photograph of the deed in the 
papers of Japan and a cartoon of our barbarism in the press 
of Italy. When Dr. Charles Gilkey went to deliver the 
Barrows lectures recently in India a former Oxford friend 
said to him, “Gilkey, what are you going to say about the 
race question?” “Nothing,” said Mr. Gilkey, “I have come 
to speak about ‘Jesus and Our Generation.’” His British 
friend replied, “You had better say something and say it in 
the first ten minutes if you hope to get any hearing for your 
message. Rightly or wrongly the students of India think of 
America as a country where they lynch Negroes and insult 
Indians.” 

Our race prejudice is only one factor along with many 
others that constitute the indictment of these foreign lands 
of our civilization with its industrialism, capitalism, imperial- 


216 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


ism, militarism and war. It is these Christian “powers” who 
constitute the principal armed nations of the world and who, 
according to Mr. Lecky, Lord Morley, Graham Wallas and 
other writers, have caused and fought most of the wars of 
recent centuries.’ 


The Completion of the Partial Reformation of Protestantism 


Do we not need with fearless abandon to return to the 
religion of Jesus? Great as it was, the reformation under 
Luther went but part way. It began well but halted with a 
partially reformed Romanism. It departed from one exter- 
nal authority only to set up another, and dared not commit 
itself in faith to the complete guidance of the Spirit. For 
Catholic creeds it substituted Lutheran or Calvinistic con- 
fessions, for an early tradition it substituted a later one. It 
‘was soon as difficult to follow, as Luther had done, right 
reason, the Christian conscience and the leading of the 
Spirit, if it involved differing from the new Protestant 
formularies, as it had been for Luther to depart from the 
Roman tradition, or for Jesus to break from the “tradition 
of men” that the Pharisees had set up. 

As Mr. Niebuhr well points out, we have confidently 
assumed that our Western civilization is Christian and our 
Protestantism is the religion of Jesus. Rather our civiliza- 
tion and our religion are both composite and only partially 
Christian. Our civilization is partly Jewish and partly Greek. 
From both we derived good and from both evil. From the 
Greek we learned the scientific spirit and our one real 

*Lack of space forbids our dealing adequately with the grounds 
of foreign missions. Our reproach lies not in our Christian ideals 
but in our failure to apply them. Have we not a unique contribution 
to make in the following: 1. God as the loving Father of all men 
maintained in a consistent monotheism in the presence of polytheism, 
pantheism or atheism; 2. Christ’s conception of Man, the infinite 
worth of each individual of every race and the brotherhood of all; 
3. the moral standard of the Sermon on the Mount and the New 
Testament; 4. Jesus Christ, all that he said, all that he did, all that 
he is; 5. a universal, spiritual, social order, the Kingdom of God. 


The implications of these constitute the ground and challenge of 


haciealily Christian service, in the spirit of love as the full sharing 
of life. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 217 


triumph of the West, the conquest of nature. This conquest 
would be truly great if it were Christianized and humanized. 
At present it is congested in undistributed wealth and unre- 
lieved poverty. From the Roman we learned our law and 
order, our imperialism in the subjugation of other peoples 
and the exploitation of their raw materials. Our influence in 
Asia and Africa might have been wholly beneficial if it had 
been Christian, human and just. Instead we have aroused 
the revolt of outraged nationalism across the world. 

From our ancestors, Teuton and Anglo-Saxon, we in- 
herited “a fierce energy and marked diligence, an unregen- 
erate tribalism and race pride, and a high degree of practical 
intelligence which has revealed itself chiefly in mechanical 
ingenuity and executive ability.” We have inherited all that 
comes from the best environment, the most bracing climate, 
the most fruitful regions of the earth, all that the best “‘Chris- 
tian” civilization, culture and education could give us, levying 
on the nine-tenths of the habitable globe which the Christian 
nations now hold for their favored race. Here again our 
inheritance might have been truly great had it been Christian, 
human and just. But our fierce nationalism, our race pride 
and fratricidal conflicts have rent the world with war. 

Where then in our civilization, Greek, Roman and Teuton, 
does Christianity come in? According to Dr. Jacks it was a 
“smothered religion” almost from the beginning. It con- 
quered the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton, only in turn 
to be partly conquered by them. It Christianized paganism, 
only to be partly paganized by it. 

Even today how far have we Christianized industry; or, 
on the contrary, how far have we industrialized and com- 
mercialized our religion? How far have we Christianized \ 
our race relations ; and how far have we racialized and segre- | 
gated Christianity? How far have we Christianized our 
international relations and outlawed war by church and 
state ; and how far have we placed our colleges and our coun- 
tries on a basis of military preparedness in reliance on force? 
Force seems such a practical and patriotic thing and love 
such a foreign sentiment to our Teuton blood. We are like 


218 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


the pagan tribe who, when immersed at their baptism to 
Christianity, held their sword arms above water that their 
religion might not interfere with their success in battle. 

Mr. Niebuhr, referring to the Protestant nations, writes, 
“The world which they have built has given the strong the 
right to exploit the weak in the name of liberty. Their con- 
ception of freedom fitted very nicely into the needs of the 
emerging industrialism and commercialism. . . . This had 
the effect of submerging Jesus’ distinctive ethics of love... . 
Thus, Protestantism, which fondly assumes that is it a uni- 
versal religion, has become not only a religion confined to 
north Europeans, but confined to the successful classes among 
north Europeans.” 

The Reformation gave us an individualism which does not 
fit the social needs of this age, which because of intimate 
political and economic contacts has made interdependence 
more important than independence. While the Reformation 
destroyed the dualism of medieval ethics and insisted that it 
must be possible to follow Christ in every occupation, it also 
impaired medieval sensitiveness to social sin. In so doing it 
created a new kind of dualism which permits a man to be 
moral in his private life, in thrift and honesty, but immoral, 
or at least unspiritual, in his social life. 

The Reformation represented the victory of the quietistic 
mystic over the sacramentalist. This was a gain insofar as 
it destroyed the idea that divine grace was a matter of magic. 
But the Reformation did not completely moralize grace. It 
only partially moralized redemption. ‘Thus today it is pos- 
sible to be “saved” in the Protestant church without being 
delivered from greed, hatred, fear or a pagan method of life. 
The modern puritan Protestant may boast that he does not 
lie, or drink, or smoke, but he often has not the slightest 
social conscience regarding the wage he pays his employees. 
He is most scrupulously Christian in the observance of Sun- 
day and in his personal morality while the standards of his 
business may be quite pagan. 

Theologically Protestantism includes both the extreme 
conservatives who base their religious certainty upon magical 


THE NEW REFORMATION 219 


revelation and extreme liberals who, in their freedom, have 
lost the vital theism which must always be the basis of 
dynamic religion. Their liberal Christianity is too pantheistic 
to be ethical. God is so identified with the universe and with 
the automatic processes of the world that they have lost the 
idea of the freedom and holiness of a transcendent God who 
calls men to a righteous crusade and who is able to furnish 
the spiritual dynamic for its achievement. ‘Thus there is 
need of completing the spiritual Reformation of Protes- 
tantism. Do we not need a whole-hearted return to Jesus 
from our semi-pagan, social order—our industrial, imperial, 
military ; Greek, Roman, Teuton; Lutheran, Calvinist, “hun- 
dred per cent American” patchwork of Christian civilization ? 
If we survey the religious situation of our time, can any one 
deny our need of a spiritual reformation? 

We might at this point divide our readers into those who 
think a new reformation is necessary and those who do not. 
Today, as always, there are conservatives and liberals, reac- 
tionaries and radicals. On the one hand are those who 
desire to “stand pat,” to keep their privileges, not to “rock 
the boat’ or to discuss these awkward situations that call 
attention to human injustice. On the other hand, there are 
those who are not blind to the facts, who cannot keep silent 
and must demand radical change. If the social conservatives, 
as they usually do, block all efforts at gradual evolution, 
refuse to permit any steps toward more equal and just con- 
ditions, then the inevitable explosion takes place, the long 
pent volcanic upheaval comes, the fury of indignant multi- 
tudes breaks, and we have reformation or revolution.+ 

The conservative elways blames the reformer for having 
created the condition which his own injustice has made and 
perpetuated. He never sees what Lincoln pointed out in 

*Canon Streeter writes, “The greatest blot on the history of the 
Church in modern times is the fact that, with the glorious exception 
of the campaign to abolish slavery, the leaders in the social, political 
and humanitarian reforms of the last century and a half in Europe 
have rarely been professing Christians; while the authorized rep- 
resentatives of organized Christianity have, as often as not, been 


on the wrong side.” “Christ the Constructive Revolutionary” in 
The Spirit, 1919, p. 358. 


220 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


homely phrase, that “you cannot fool all the people all the 
time.” Shut safe in his comfortable isolation and never 
caring or daring to know how the other half lives, or thinks, 
getting his misinformation second-hand at his club or church, 
he never knows that the multitude is disillusioned already 
and refuses to accept the present system of injustice. Indeed 
he is often so blinded that he does not even see or admit that 
there is injustice. 


The Character of the Reformation 


We believe that a new reformation must have at least three 
characteristics. 

1. It will be true to the scientific spirit and genius of the 
age. It must be oriented to our new knowledge as well as 
our old faith; it will be modern, and not a mere repetition 
of, or return to, something ancient or medieval. It must be 
truly a new reformation. 

2. It will combine vital personal religion and social appli- 
cation. It will unite personal faith in God and practical 
service for man; it must meet the religious as well as the 
national and international situation of our time, just as 
former awakenings met the needs of theirs. 

3. It will have the dynamic of spiritual passion. It will 
be neither sectarian nor partisan, neither “acrid” nor “arid,” 
neither destructive nor negative, but constructive, positive 
and passionate. A genuine new reformation must embody 
not only the spirit of St. Francis, of Martin Luther and of 
John Wesley, but the flaming zeal of the apostle Paul and 
the very spirit of Jesus himself. In short, we believe there 
can be no reformation worthy of the name that is not at 
once modern, social and spiritual. 

1. The new reformation will be true to the sctentific spirit. 
It will not do violence to the priceless discoveries of modern 
science. It will offer no false antithesis between reason and 
faith. It will propose no divorce of religion from intelli- 
gence. We have been told by men for whose character we 
had profound respect, that it is more important to know the 
Rock of Ages than the ages of the rocks, that they would 


THE NEW REFORMATION 221 


rather have their sons learn their A B C’s in heaven than 
know their Greek in hell. Who would not? “But why the 
contrast? Why this constant intimation that intelligence and 
Christianity are incompatible?’ Why should the study of 
Greek or the ages of the rocks, of evolution or relativity, of 
biology or psychology, be fatal to Christian faith? What 
are we afraid of? Is not all truth God’s truth? 

Are we now to repeat the mistakes of the past and by a 
fresh attack on science lose the educated youth of our day? 
Already literally thousands have lost their faith because of 
this false antithesis, this fatal conflict. We are left as a result 
with a science that is materialistic and a religion that is often 
ignorant. 

Does not hope lie rather in a sound synthesis? Science 
has placed in our hands certain master keys to unlock the 
problems of the future—the scientific spirit, the passion for 
truth, teachable humility, and tolerance. We hold its keys of 
the inductive method, the principles of mathematics, the 
theory of evolution, the principles of energy and of relativity. 
We have a vast and increasing store of unused new knowl- 
edge in science, in psychology, in theology. Why should we 
not come to terms with science once for all? For centuries 
organized religion has fought a retreating rear-guard action 
with advancing scierce. The church has attacked the new 
theories of science and banned its books. Then, when the 
battle has been lost, and the new scientific theory has been 
adopted by practically all thinking men, the forces of organ- 
ized religion have beaten a retreat by night and taken up 
some new position that is often equally untenable. Where 
has the church ever officially admitted it was wrong on the 
issues of the past, concerning a flat world, the Copernican 
theory, the age of the earth, gravitation, or evolution? Have 
we not need to come in a genuine spirit of penitence and to 
make restitution for the past ?? 


1Edwin Tenney Brewster maintains that so far as its relation with 
modern science is concerned the Protestant reformation came two 
centuries too soon. It belonged to the middle ages, took its stand 
against the Copernican theory and was on the wrong side of the 
gulf that separates darkness from light. While it reformed certain 


222 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


The new reformation must be true to the new psychology 
and our increased knowledge of human nature. It will not 
attempt a mere repetition of an annual “revival,” a yearly 
emotional spasm, a repeating of shibboleths to save all over 
again the individual’s own selfish soul. We must relate his 
life healthily in concrete behavior to practical programs in 
his community. We should press upon each and ali the 
question, not only “What must I do to be saved?” but “What 
must we do to save society ; and how can we lose ourselves in 
service to find them in vital religion?” 

The three marks of the new reformation which we need 
are equally true to the spirit of modern science and to the 
spirit of Jesus. Truth, obedience, humility, faith; the value 
of the individual, the social imperative, the principle of sacri- 
fice, the law of service, the worth of character, the building 
of a better social order, and a new reformation that shall 
embrace them all; these are as true to science as they are to 
religion. At the mouth of two witnesses, science and religion, 
we are assured of our need of reformation and of the scien- 
tific demands of the age to which it must conform. 


2. The new reformation will combine a personal and social 
gospel. 


If we recall our three typical religious awakenings, did not 
each combine the personal and social?? Was not the com- 
bination of the personal and social elements in religion due 
in each case to the pattern which they rediscovered in their 
Founder? Jesus always combined in winsome symmetry and 
marvelous balance the hidden silence of the secret place “a 


outstanding abuses it left the substructure of medieval thinking un- 
touched. We have need to complete the work left unfinished by the 
Protestant reformation. “The Understanding of Religion,” p. 129. 

* Francis combined with his childlike joy in God a practical service 
for society. The whole world was his monastery and every man 
without bread or raiment had claim upon all that he had. Luther 
came from his hours of devotion to the active world of herculean 
service. Wesley daily maintained the balance between the devotional 
and the practical aspeets of religion. He was centered in God and 
personal religion but he launched many of the social movements of 
his day in education, philanthropy and moral reform. 


THE NEW REFORMATION 223 


great while before day,” and the tireless ministry of service 
amid the throng and the noise of the market place. His 
enthusiasm for humanity springs from his yet deeper enthu- 
siasm for God. His communion with God drives him forth 
to service for men. Our age has become so spent in feverish 
activity, so starved upon material husks, that it is now, how- 
ever unconsciously, hungry and thirsty for a fresh discovery 
of God. Though it may use other language, its soul is 
“athirst for God, for the living God.” Is it not historically 
true that in each of the awakenings of the past there was a 
fresh discovery of God? The greatest field of undiscovered 
knowledge is still, not beetles, not stars, not electrons, not 
human behavior, but God. Unless history belies itself there 
will be no reformation, old or new, without a rediscovery of 
God. 

And there is no hope of reformation that does not bring 
a rediscovery of man. The artificial separation of life into 
water-tight compartments is fatal. As we have seen, the 
false dualism or division between religion and science, the 
sacred and secular, the personal and social, has impoverished 
the world. And yet, as truly as there are millions in the 
world to whom God and religious experience are meaningless 
names, so the vast majority of Christians today are almost 
utterly blind to the social implications of the gospel. They 
have no doubt concerning the splendid rediscovery of the 
central message of Luther and Wesley of justification by 
faith. Rather they placidly accept a selfish, personal, pos- 
sessive salvation, and with the priest and Levite of old, pass 
by on the other side from suffering humanity. They are 
“saved” for a future world, but “lost” to any adequate sense 
of social responsibility in this. 

Before all are the grim facts of poverty, injustice, a higher 
percentage of sickness and death, of vice and crime among 
the poor than among the prosperous; individuals in need, 
multitudes in want. No sane man denies these facts. No 
religionist or humanitarian but that admits there is some call 
for pity or “charity” or some form of help. To live a respec- 
table life, to believe in Christ, to attend church, to contribute 


224 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


to home and foreign missions, to give tithes for charity or 
relief—all this many of us have done from our youth up. 
What lack we yet? 

Let us be concrete and come down to cases. One night 
the writer went down into the slums of his city. He had 
become uneasy with the thought of Lazarus at his gate. He 
was not literally there; the police are paid to prevent that 
awkward situation. So we visited his tenement. Here were 
four of the first homes that we entered. 

1. The first was that of a poor tailor. He was out of 
work, and we were reminded that according to the report of 
Herbert Hoover’s Commission on Waste, the tailors are 
among the trades that are unemployed a third of every year. 
There were twelve in the family. Four were sleeping in 
one bed, three in another, one on a box; the mother was 
dying in the remaining bed. Unable to work at his trade, 
the man had Deen out since four o’clock in the morning try- 
ing to gather mushrooms. He had found only fifty cents 
worth. Twelve people cannot live on fifty cents in New 
York City, and his railway ticket had cost him a dollar. He 
broke down and cried as he saw his hungry children about 
him, 

2. In the second home poverty and unemployment had 
driven the boy to his first step toward crime. The father 
and son were both out of work. An automobile was standing 
apparently deserted on the street. A man offered this boy 
fifty cents if he would bring him the spare tire. Just as he 
got it free he was seized by the police and taken off to jail. 
Our vindictive, pagen penal system will pro’ ably do the 
rest; and one more will be added to the “crime «= ave.” 

3. In the third home poverty had driven a young girl to 
the very brink of the abyss. She was a beautiful girl. There 
were tears on her face as we entered. She is working for 
an employer, perhaps a Christian employer, for $12 a week. 
The mother and two daughters were making paper flowers 
as we entered. Altogether they were earning a dollar a day 
to eke out their slender income. But the family has a debt 
of two hundred dollars. Hard though they work the debt is 


THE NEW REFORMATION 225 


growing every week. This girl is standing on the brink of 
the moral precipice where so many of the daughters of the 
poor have slipped and gone over. 

4, As we knocked at the door of the fourth tenement a 
crippled boy of fourteen hobbled down the dark hallway. A 
family of eleven were sharing three beds, three or four sleep- 
ing in each bed, and endeavoring to make ends meet on a 
total income of some three dollars a day, or $21 a week. All 
were underfed, four of the children had been suffering with 
rickets with their bent and softened bones. Here was little 
Mario. At the age of 3 he could neither walk nor talk. 
From sheer lack of food he was 50 per cent underweight. 
His body was distorted and deformed. But the one equipped 
church in this slum with its shining cross held high in this 
“city of dreadful night’? has reached out through its staff 
of workers to lay healing and helping hands on 16,000 chil- 
dren this year. Today little Mario can walk, he can talk. 
He is a human being, redeemed because somebody cared. 
But what are these few who have been helped among so 
many in need? Here, as we have seen, are 270,000 darkened 
tenement rooms that never see one ray of direct sunlight all | 
the year round. Here are over 600,000 living in these 
wretched tenements. Let us not think that these slums exist 
only in New York and the larger cities. We will find them 
in our own city if we begin to examine how the other half 
lives. 

Now let us leave the tenements of Lazarus for the homes 
of Dives. Let us take four typical homes of the rich. These 
men are not sinners more than the rest of us. They are not 
responsible for creating the present social order any more 
than the poor are solely responsible for their unemployment, 
poverty and crime. We are not here reflecting upon four 
individuals but upon ourselves. 

1. Dives, number one, is a Christian, and that not in name 
only. He is an active church member and an honored citizen. 
But the crumbs that fall from the tables of his palatial sum- 
mer and winter residences would feed many children. His 
last pleasure trip consumed many tens of thousands of 


226 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


dollars. The income from his fortune of over a hundred 
million dollars could not only supply all his own needs but 
save the lives of literally hundreds of little children in these 
slums. His individualistic economics have never taught him 
that every one of his luxuries definitely adds to the cost of 
living of the poor. 

2. Dives, number two, is a perfect gentleman, a public- 
spirited citizen, a Christian, personally attractive in an 
extraordinary degree. By no fault of his own he has suc- 
ceeded. His thrifty ancestor from abroad landed in this city 
and prospered in trade. He bought land on Manhattan 
Island. Several million people moved in on the surrounding 
land. Lots for which he paid less than $400 are now valued 
at $400,000; and a farm for which he paid $20,000 is now 
worth $10,000,000. The family fortune is now valued at 
scores of millions of dollars. We are not blaming Dives 
for having prospered. But here are the poor in these dark- 
ened tenements, nine-tenths of them with no home of their 
own, no security of life, no adequate chance for their children. 
This Christian probably never realizes that the unearned 
increment from renis is a primary factor in the high cost of 
living and the consequent privation and suffering of the 
poor. Itis partly for this reason that only 3 per cent of the 
new apartments in New York are within the reach of 70 per 
cent of the population. A million of Lazarus’ offspring lie 
at Dives’ gate—at your gate and mine. Just what do we 
propose to do about it? ! 

3. Dives, number three, is a worthy citizen, a philanthro- 
pist, a contributor to charity, a patron of welfare work, his 
praises are sung by leading social writers. He has never fared 
sumptuously in purple and fine linen, nor failed to work 
early and late. He gives useful employment to tens of thou- 
sands of men. Undoubtedly with a clear conscience, for 
many years he subjected thousands of his workers to 
inhuman hours of labor, long after others had successfully 
demonstrated the possibility of a more humane policy. He 
has successfully resisted all efforts of men to organize to 
improve their conditions and has refused to recognize repre- 


THE NEW REFORMATION 22'7 


sentatives of their own choosing. He has successfully 
maintained the spy system in his industry. Although no one 
individual is exclusively responsible, although skilled work- 
ers have been well paid, as a net result of the whole system 
some of the workers testify that life has been mechanized, 
homes have been broken, and the vast majority of the work- 
ers are out of touch with organized religion and with the 
profession of Christianity by the prosperous class. 

4. Dives, number four. We were told he was a prominent 
Christian, and that he was known as “the meanest man in 
town.” We called at his palatial residence. The mission 
boards were in debt. We asked him if he would take a 
foreign missionary under his own board. He pleaded that 
“charity begins at home.” We then asked if he would give 
an equal sum to the home missionary society of his church. 
He pleaded his preference for hospitals. We asked if he 
would contribute to a hospital in his city then in need. Again 
he began to make excuses. We left. A few years passed 
-and we saw the notice of his death. Over twenty millions 
had been left by a Christian known as the meanest man in 
town to a son spoiled by his money. Dives number four had 
entered upon his reward. 

These four men are not worse than others. The first 
three are far above the average. They are almost exemplary 
according to the standards of our time. The fourth is typical 
also of a class. For, the majority of Christians who have 
made money seem to be possessed by it and are unable or 
unwilling generously to give or adequately to share it. These 
four dwellings of the poor and of the rich are typical. These 
extremes are far more characteristic of our day than of the 
time of Christ when he uttered the parable of Dives and 
Lazarus, when the enormity of wealth unshared in the pres- 
ence of unrelieved poverty smote upon his sensitive heart. 
We seem to have grown callous to evils that have become 
chronic. As Dean Inge writes, “What has decayed among ) 
us strongly and rapidly is the sense of sin.” Is there not 
need for a genuine revival of a sense of sin to arouse the 
conscience of a rich and worldly church to its criminal neg- 


228 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


lect and its colossal selfishness? Any such revival must 
begin with ourselves. We must say with the prophet, “T 
and my father’s house have sinned.” Ministers and laymen, 
we are all socially responsible. The prophetic voice must be 
raised in our pulpits. The minister who sees this social need 
and remains silent will soon cease to see it. ‘“‘What is not 
expressed dies.” | 

Jesus may visualize or dramatize for us a single Dives with 
Lazarus at his gate. But our present order has built long 
avenues where generic hundreds dwell whose surname is 
Dives. Hard by are hundreds of thousands desiring to be 
fed with the crumbs of privilege that fall from our surfeited 
lives—men and women who need only plain food, fresh air, 
the sunlight of God, security of life, regular employment, a 
living wage, education and development for each child, con- 
ditions of health, a fair chance for the pursuit of happiness 
—all that one could mean by “the good life.” 

“He that loveth rot his brother whom he hath seen cannot 
love God whom he hath not seen.” Instead of loving our 
neighbor, or our brother as ourselves we come to care more 
for every whim of our own, for the provision for every pos- 
sible physical need and every surfeit of luxury for our chil- 
dren’s children in countless years to come in their congested 
inheritance, than we do to supply the hunger and want, or 
prevent the malnutrition, sickness and daily death of the 
children of the poor at our very doors. At the very moment 
while they are dying we go on growing rich in a poor world. 
As John Ruskin pointed out to his generation, so long as there 
is cold, or hunger, or want in the land, so long will splendor 
of dress and luxury of life be a crime. What is it that 
money does to us? What is the meaning of “the deceitful- 
ness of riches’? 

What is this subtle selfishness, this creeping paralysis, this 
benumbing poison of materialism that the possession of 
wealth spreads through our veins? What is this curse of 
unshared wealth? Jesus warned us to sell, to give, to share, 
to distribute to others, to lay not up for ourselves treasures 
on earth nor amass selfish wealth. We exactly reverse his 
command, his example and the spirit of his life. We get 


ee 


THE NEW REFORMATION 229 


money and in the end the money “gets” us. We grow rich, 
yet somehow we have become spiritually poor. We have 
our unshared wealth and the poor their unrelieved poverty. 
The money blinds us, it blunts us, it hardens us. It is 
“deceitful,’’ until in the end we deceive ourselves and are 
not quite honest, even with ourselves. We “talk poor,’ we 
refuse to give adequately, until we almost come to believe our 
protestations. The writer thanks God for all the generous 
Christians he has known. For thirty-five years he has been 
called upon to solicit funds in public and private, in all the 
principal cities of America, for charitable and religious 
causes at home and abroad. He has met some truly generous 
givers. But in all these years he has known but two or three 
individuals whose money never “got” them in the slightest 
degree, who gave adequately and up to the full limit of their 
ability, without evasion, postponement, excuse or compro- 
mise; generously, wisely, joyously, consistently year after 
year. 

_ We saw the church in Czarist Russia miss its day of oppor- 
tunity. It identified itself, not with Christ and the people, 
but too much with privilege and pomp and power, till the 
fury of indignant multitudes broke upon it. 

Prince Youssoupoff of the old regime, on his recent visit 
to America to recover one or two of his Rembrandts, testified 
incidentally to his personal possession of thirty-seven estates 
valued at $250,000,000; his jewels, art treasures, etc., bring- 
ing up his fortune to some $500,000,000. Was this young 
man worse than others? Was he not a conventionally ortho- 
dox Christian? Rejecting the caricature of religion too 
often presented, along with much genuine though ignorant 
piety on the part of many peasants and priests, the new 
jeaders of Russia endeavored to do away with what they 
wrongly conceived to be the abomination of religion. You 
may stand today in Moscow beside the bier of the embalmed 
body of a man whom the people believed lived and died 
for them. He might have had palaces and fortunes. Instead, 
with the other leaders, he lived simply and cheerfully on 
two dollarsa day. You may point out, and justly, the glaring 


230 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


faults of his system—its class dictatorship, its severe restric- 
tion of liberty, its frank Marxian materialism, its reacting 
from an extreme individual to an extreme communal form 
of government. But the whole mass of legislation that he 
left and the whole system of life that was organized, with 
all its glaring faults and errors, were framed with single 
intent for the masses of the poor peasants and workers, who 
constituted nine-tenths of the population. No special personal 
privilege of wealth was sought by those in power. 

Let us lift our eyes from this silent form of Lenin before 
which the hushed multitude stand in reverent, passionate 
devotion, to the quotation above the shrine of the Iberian 
Virgin where a few peasants are crossing themselves and 
praying for miracles of healing. The inscription reads 
“Religion, the opium of the people.” Let us ask ourselves 
whether Czarist organized religion was not indeed an opiate. 
What was the matter with religion in Russia that left its 
selfish wealth unshared and its poverty unrelieved, its slums 
unvisited, its workers underpaid and denied the right to 
organize to improve their wretched lot? Did the Christians 
realize or seriously endeavor to change the monstrous 
iniquity of the system? Did the church lift up its voice? 

What is the matter with our religion? Will anything short 
of a reformation arouse us, a re-formation both personal 
and social that goes back to the simplicity and sacrifice of 
the religion of Jesus himself? The multitude in Russia, or 
in America, would stand more readily before Jesus Christ, 
the carpenter of Nazareth, than before Lenin, but they will 
be won by no caricature and by the representatives of no 
religion that is not sacrificial. They will not accept its 
spokesmen if they condone or maintain such an unjust social 
order unchallenged and unchanged. 

3. The new reformation must have the dynamic of spir- 
itual passion. In any age the outward veneer of the habitual 
state of things as it appears to the callous spirit is always 
respectable. But if we can look with unaccustomed eyes 
upon the spiritual condition of the church and the moral 
situation in the nation, are we not driven to the conclusion 


THE NEW REFORMATION 231 


that nothing short of a reformation is imperatively needed 
today? Do not the spiritual standards of Jesus and the impli- 
cations of the Kingdom or family of God require a radical 
transformation? If we face the magnitude of the task of 
this needed reformation both in our religious and national 
life, we are driven to the conclusion that nothing less than 
a spiritual and social passion which can draw upon a dynamic 
of incalculable reserves of power can make possible such a 
reformation. The freezing reason’s colder part, the nega- 
tives of criticism, the inhibitions of doubt, the paralysis of 
selfishness have never yet kindled a reformation. Passion 
is the glowing link which binds together thought and action, 
when a spiritual dynamic ideal confronts a desperate need. 
Like an electric current, a spiritual movement is generated 
which may pour its convertible energy into the light, heat 
and power needed to accomplish the end. We are in a 
living universe alive with dynamic power imprisoned in 
every atom, available upon the fulfilment of certain condi- 
‘tions. It is human purpose which discovers, releases and 
harnesses this power to accomplish its ends. If we study 
the historic movements of the past it becomes evident that 
such power was gained not by the spell of magic but by 
obedience to law. 

One of the first conditions is human fellowship. Social 
ends have been chiefly accomplished neither by the isolated 
individual, nor by the blind action of the mob, but by the 
cooperative unity of the group. If we separate burning 
brands from a fire we soon have cold sticks and dead ashes. 
Combine them, and at the point where they converge these 
dying embers leap again into fiame. 

It was a small group associated in fellowship, kindled by 
a common purpose, that blazed about Mazzini, which realized 
the twin purposes of nationality and liberty, first in Italy 
and later in many countries in Europe. It was a little group 
about Washington, Adams and Jefferson that guided the 
revolution and created the first American republic. It was 
a small group in France and later in Russia that, however 
confused or misguided on certain issues, accomplished for 


232 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


good or ill vast results in Europe. Let us note that in every 
case, whether morally right or wrong, there was a social 
passion that counted no price too great to accomplish its end. 
For the leaders in these four revolutions their social purpose 
had almost the driving force of a religion. Sober or fanati- 
cal, there was none but would have died for his cause, 
whether Washington, Rousseau, Mazzini or Lenin. 

Men have died alike for revolution or reformation, for 
social or for spiritual passion. Have we not a cause worth 
dying for that combines them both in one? It is maintained 
in the volume on “The Spirit” edited by Canon Streeter, 
that “what happened at Pentecost” was the emergence of 
fellowship. It is in this active comradeship between person- 
alities, in the battle for a common quest, that personality 
itself is transformed.t Men are molded in association, 
whether with men or God. Isolated individuals are welded 
into an organism. Companionship leads in turn to coOpera- 
tion, discovery, light, vision, courage, accomplishment. In 
almost every great movement a truth is first seen by the 
individual and incarnated in a life. It is then shared and 
incorporated by the group. Realized in a social unit, it is 
carried by a crusade to the church, the nation or the world. 
The mass of men thus rise by one step to a higher level. 
Then the prophet or reformer sees the next new truth against 
the dark background of the social need. But every reforma- 
tion begins in a group glowing with spiritual or social passion. 


* Professor Hocking in his “Human Nature and Its Remaking,” 
says, “As to structure, human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic 
part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. 
Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and 
conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is 
longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, 
his powers of habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his 
susceptibility to social impressions keenest—and it becomes clear that 
in every way Nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for 
her own displacement. His major instincts and passions first 
appear on the scene not as a controlling force, but as elements of 
play, in a prolonged life of play. Other creatures Nature could 
largely finish; the human creature must finish himself . . . To 
anyone who asserts as a dogma that ‘human nature never changes’ 
it is fair to reply, ‘It is human nature to change itself.’” Hocking, 
“Human Nature and Its Remaking,” p. 9 


ee eS ae eee 


THE NEW REFORMATION 233 


Let us recall the history of reformations. There was 
the group that Jesus gathered by the lakeside in Galilee. 
According to the cold calculation of reason, how much could 
twelve unlettered Jewish peasants have accomplished? Yet 
we have seen incidentally in this chapter that nineteen cen- 
turies afterwards five hundred million copies of their mes- 
sage, in six hundred languages, were carried by thirty 
thousand messengers to the limits of the world, and shared 
by five hundred and sixty million followers. With all their 
faults, millions of these followers hold this message as the 
chief thing in their lives. Even though the cold rationalist 
may pity the church or criticize the measure of failure of 
professing Christians, is it not still true that more would 
die for this cause today than for any other on earth? Here 
then at the source is passion and power. 

However far short these millions fall of living up to his 
challenging ideal, is it not undeniable that this Man held a 
burning passion in his heart? A combined spiritual and 

- social passion and power burned within him: he kindled a 
fire that nineteen centuries of human history have never yet 
been able to put out. Smothered or dampened or driven 
underground, it has broken out again and again. 

See this passion flame afresh and leap into being as it 
kindles the group about Paul of Tarsus. Men may differ 
with his theology but they cannot deny his passion. Beaten, 

“stoned, persecuted through the cities of the Roman world, 
what is this drive and dynamic that energizes this wasted 
frame? From Thessalonica, where the church he founded 
has never ceased, even to Rome, where they beheaded him, 
cities in uproar complained, “These that have turned the 
world upside down are come hither also.” Shipwrecked, 
imprisoned, mobbed, stoned, starving, here burned a passion 
and a power that planted human groups and fellowships 
across the world that have never wholly ceased in nineteen 
centuries. These groups have maintained not only their 
continuity, but the power of renewal and regeneration when- 
ever the original conditions of revival have been again 
fulfilled. 


234 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


Space forbids our examination of the life and achieve- 
ments of the group in Alexandria about Clement and Origen; 
that in North Africa led by Tertullian and Cyprian, or about 
St. Augustine in the fourth century. It was the same flame 
that leaped up again in the heart of St. Francis in Assissi and 
in many of the monastic movements. Wellnigh all Italy 
turned to these “‘little brothers of the poor” when they saw 
again the life that makes men hunger, and avid to attain. 

In spite of all the differences in the theological fuel that 
it consumed, it was the same fire that burned in Savonarola 
and John Huss, in the groups about Loyola and Xavier in 
the south as about Luther and Melanchthon in the north 
of Europe. It was the same life leaping to flame again in 
the Holy Club, meeting in Wesley’s room in Lincoln College, 
and later in Newman and Froude in the Oxford movement. 

The fire breaks out again in the group about William 
Carey as they carry the torch throughout Asia and Africa, 
and from the “haystack group” at Williamstown as they go 
eut to the ends of the earth. It burns again in the heart of 
Moody and the students at Mount Hermon in 1886 as with 
splendid effrontery they dare a watchword that embraces 
“the evangelization of the world in this generation.” <A later 
generation may criticize their theology, but what of their 
Spiritual passion? 

It was the same fire that burned in the heart of Walter 
Rauschenbush with the social passion that had often been lost 
in other-worldliness or mysticism. There was the same 
determination to carry the conditions of the fullness of life 
to the stunted lives in the slums as there had been to tell a 
message of good news to the distant tribes of Africa. 

And, mark it well, that fire is burning still. You ask, 
“Where is it burning? What sign of reformation do you 
see? Can you discern upon the horizon so much as a cloud 
the size of a man’s hand?” We have not even looked to see. 
The Kingdom of God is within you. Say not “Lo here!’, 
“Lo there!” and go not forth to find it. No reformation 
ever came, no revival was ever achieved by the cold calcula- 
tion of chances, when it seemed probable, or near, or even 


——— 


THE NEW REFORMATION 235 


possible. Under the divine compulsion of a passion that 
flamed and struck, these men went forth wellnigh indifferent 
to life or death, to calculated success or seeming defeat, if 
only they might live the life, share the flame, pass on the 
torch, and let it burn. 

That fire is burning still. There are yet seven thousand 
that have never bowed the knee to Baal nor worshipped 
Mammon. Ay, more than that—among many creeds and 
tongues, religions and systems, orthodox or heretical, the fire 
has not gone out. In the fundamentalist Samuel Zwemer 
or the modernist Albert Schweitzer in the heart of Africa; 
in Maude Royden among the dockers of East London, or 
Amy Wilson Carmichael in southern India; in the great 
soul of Gandhi, or the half-blind Kagawa living “beyond 
the deathline” in the slums of Japan; in nameless and often 
unorthodox men and women in many lands that fire is 
burning still. | 

How may we share it? It cometh not by observation, or 
publicity, or popularity; not by numbers or statistics or 
“success.” But here, now, in the commonplace of the present 
and actual, where two or three are met together they may 
open their dry hearts to this enkindling flame. 


“TI know of lands that are sunk in shame, 
And hearts that faint and tire; 
And I know of men who ask not fame 
Who would give their lives for the fire. 
I know of hearts that despair of help 
And lives that could kindle to flame, 
And I know a Name, a Name, a Name 
Can set these lives on fire. 
Its sound is a brand, its letters flame; 
I know a Name, a Name, a Name 
’*T will set these lives on fire.” 


Every common bush is as much aflame with God as it 
ever was or will be. Every human heart may be as much 
the dwelling place of God as was ever any prophet or saint, 


236 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 


provided only it fulfil the simple and eternal conditions of 
all reformation of religious life. 

In every such movement of the past there was on the part 
of the founder and the original group a single-hearted devo- 
tion to God. There was a sacrificial return to Jesus’ way 
of living, regardless of the cost. There was a self-forgetful 
service for men that sought to meet the actual needs of the 
age. Beginning never with numbers, never with majorities 
or favor, but always with concern for quality rather than 
quantity, for reality rather than appearance, in small groups 
the fire was lit and rekindled in the past. This spiritual 
and social awakening may come early or it may come Iate. 
It may hasten or tarry, but come it surely will when the same 
conditions are again fulfilled. History will repeat itself, 


God will fulfil himself, wherever two or three seek and find _ 


they may know again a new reformation. 





’ 
y 
: 
‘ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
I. The New Science 
General 


BALFOUR AND OTHERS, Science, Religion and Reality 

WuitEHeap, A. N., Religion and the Modern World 

ELpRIDGE, SEBA, The Organization of Life 

CALDWELL AND SLosson, Science Remaking the World 

Stosson, E. E., Keeping Up With Science; Chats on 
Science; Creative Chemistry; Sermons of a Chemist 

Tuomson, J. A., Science and Religion; The Outline of 
Science, 4 vols.; The System of Animate Nature 

MILiIKAN, R. A., Science and Life; The Electron 

HENpDErRSoN, L. J., The Fitness of the Environment; The 
Order of Nature 

Morcan, C. Lioyp, The Interpretation of Nature; Emer- 
é gent Evolution; Life, Matter and Spirit 
_ Hatpang, J. S., Mechanism, Life and Personality 


_. Soppy, F., Science and Life 


; Simpson, J. Y., Landmarks in the Struggle Between Science 





and Religion; The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature 
MATHEWws, SHAILER, Contributions of Science to Religion 
_ AxioTTa, A., The Idealistic Reaction Against Science 


On Evolution 


Lane, H. H., Evolution and Christian Faith 
ConkKLin, E. G., Evolution and The Bible; Heredity and 
Environment 
Coutter, J. M., Evolution and Christianity 
Tuomson, J. A., Concerning Evolution 
' Ketiocc, Vernon, Mind and Heredity; Darwinism Today 
Dawson, Marsuatt, Nineteenth Century Evolution and 
After 
Simpson, J. Y., Man and the Attainment of Immortality 
O’Tootz, G. B., The Case Against Evolution 
237 


238 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


NasmytH, G. W., Social Progress and the Darwinian 
Theory 
The classical works of Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, etc. 


On Relativity 


EINSTEIN, A., Relativity 

Eppineton, A. S., Space,. Time and Gravitation 

Stosson, E. E., Easy Lessons in Einstein 

OUTLINE OF SCIENCE, Vol. IV, pp. 1023-1043 

RusseELL, BertrRAND, The ABC of Relativity; The ABC 
of Atoms 

Birp, J. M., Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and Gravi- 
tation 

Haas, A., The New Physics 

HALDANE, ViscounT R. B., The Reign of Relativity 


II. The New Psychology 
On Behaviorism 


Watson, J. B., Behaviorism; Behavior, an Introduction to 
Comparative Psychology; Psychology from the Stand- 
point of a Behaviorist 

THORNDIKE, E. B., Educational Psychology 

Martin, E. D., Psychology 

Hott, E. B., The Freudian Wish 

A.uportT, F. H., Social Psychology 

Dorsey, G. A., Why We Behave Like Human Beings 


Non-Behavioristic Studies 


WoopworTtH, R. S., Dynamic Psychology; Psychology, A 
Study of Mental Life 

Rogpack, A. A., Behaviorism and Psychology 

McDoveatt, Wo., Body and Mind; Outline of Psychology; 
Social Psychology; Abnormal Psychology; The Group 
Mind, etc. 

James, Wo., Psychology; Talks to Teachers, etc. 

ALEXANDER, S., Space, Time and Deity 

BriGHTMAN, E. S., An Introduction to Philosophy 


— 
a 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 239 


Cauxins, M. W., A First Book in Psychology 

Cor, G. A., The Psychology of Religion 

HALDANE, J. S., Mechanism, Life and Personality 
Leicuton, J. A., Man and the Cosmos 

Moore, J. S., Foundations of Psychology 

Pratt, J. B., Matter and Spirit 

Royce, J., The World and the Individual 

STRICKLAND, F, L., Psychology of Religious Experience 


Psychoanalysis 


Freup, Sicmunp, A General Introduction to Psychoanaly- 
sis; The History of Psychoanalysis; Collective Papers, 
4 vols. 

Hart, Bernarp, The Psychology of Insanity 

Pierce, F., Mobilizing the Mid-Brain 

Tansey, A. G., The New Psychology 

Haprietp, J. A., Psychology and Morals; The Psychology 

of Power 

Mitier, H. Cricuton, The New Psychology and the 

Preacher 

Jones, Ernest, Papers on Psychoanalysis 

FLtcEt, J. C., The Psychoanalytic Study of the Family 

June, C. G., Psychology of the Unconscious; Psychological 
Types; Analytical Psychology 

Apter, ALFRED, The Neurotic Constitution 


Gestalt School 


Korrxa, K., etc., Psychologies of 1925. 
KorrKa, K., The Growth of the Mind 
Kou ter, W., Mentality of Apes 
BurnuaM, N. H., The Normal Mind 


General 


Various Autuors, Psychologies of 1925, Powell Lectures, 
Clark University 

McDoucatt, W., An Outline of Psychology; Abnormal 
Psychology; Social Psychology; Body and Mind, etc. 

Barnes, H. E., Psychology and History 


240 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Burnuam, N. H., The Normal Mind 

Martin, E. D., Psychology 

Duntap, Knicut, Old and New Viewpoints in Psychology 
MitcuHeELi, T. W., The Psychology of Medicine 

Hart, BERNARD, The Psychology of Insanity 


III. The Discovery of God 


BeckwitH, C. A., The Idea of God 

PRINGLE-PatTtTison, A. S., The Idea of God 

TEMPLE, WILLIAM, Christus Veritas 

Jones, Str Henry, A Faith that Inquires 

Gore, C., Belief in God 

HosnouseE, L. T., Development and Purpose 

Wesp, S. J. C., God and Personality 

BRIGHTMAN, E. S., Religious Values 

Capoux, A. T., Essays in Christian Thinking 

OrcHuarp, W. E., Foundations of Faith 

MacxintosH, D. C., The Reasonableness of Christianity 

Hocxine, W. E., The Meaning of God in Human Experi- 
ence 

CLARKE, W. N., The Christian Doctrine of God; Outline of 
Christian Theology 

Sortey, W. R., Moral Values and The Idea of God 

SNOWDEN, J. H., The Personality of God 

Bowneg, B. P., Theism 

Kino, H. C., Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life 

Pratt, J. B., The Religious Consciousness 

Warp, JAMES, The Realm of Ends 

ELpRIDGE, SEBA, The Organization of Life 


IV. The New View of the Bible 


Morratt, J., Introduction to the New Testament 

STREETER, B. H., The Four Gospels 

SCOR thor hide: he First Age of Christianity; The Outline 
of Christianity, Vol. I 

GoopsPEED, E. J., The Story of the New Testament 

BeweEr, Jutius A., Literature of the Old Testament 

Jones, M., The New Testament in the Twentieth Century 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 


Rosgrnson, B. W., The Gospel of John 

Fospickx, H. E., The Modern Use of the Bible 

Haw tey, C. A., Teaching of the Apocrypha and Apocalypse 

Dickey, SAMUEL, Constructive Revolution of Jesus 

Hopces, Dean, How to Know the Bible 

Bacon, B. W., The Founding of the Church 

Burkitt, F. C., Christian Beginnings 

McGirrert, A. C., History of Christianity in the Apostalic 
Age 

Gtover, T. R., Paul of Tarsus 


V. What Is Christianity? 


Brewer, Juuius A., Literature of the Old Testament in Its 
Historical Development 

KENT, CHARLES F., The Kings and Prophets of Israel 

Kine, Basit, The Discovery of God 

OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY, Vol. I 

_ Ktausner, JosEPH, Jesus of Nazareth 

Gore, Cuartes, Belief in Christ 

Dickey, SAMUEL, The Constructive Revolution of Jesus 

Guiover, T. R., Paul of Tarsus 

Jerrerson, C. E., Character of Paul 

Scott, Ernest F., The First Age of Christianity; The 
Ethical Teaching of Jesus 

McGirrert, ArtHur C., The God of the Early Christians; 
The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas 

Ancus, S., The Mystery Religions and Christianity 

Harnack, ApotpH, What Is Christianity? 

Kennepy, H., St. Paul and the Mystery Religions 

Casz, S. J., The Evolution of Early Christianity 

CiLemMeEN, Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish Sources 


VI. The New Reformation 


Cuase, Stuart, The Tragedy of Waste 

Fitcu, Joun A., Causes of Industrial Unrest 
Bertram, Artuur, The Economic Illusion 
Tawney, R. H., The Acquisitive Society 
Russet, BERTRAND, Proposed Roads to Freedom 


242 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


OtpHAM, J. H., Christianity and the Race Problem 
Locker, ALtain, The New Negro 

Cor, GEORGE ALBERT, What Ails Our Youth 

Linpsey, Jupce Ben B., The Revolt of Modern Youth 
Eppy & Pacsr, Makers of Freedom 

Etwoop, C. A., Reconstruction in Religion 

Brewster, E. T., The Understanding of Religion 

Box, E., Dollars Only 

Barnes, H. E., The Repression of Crime 


APPENDIX I 
Doctrine and the New Reformation 


As far as possible we have avoided doctrinal discussions 
in this book because we do not believe they are a new chal- 
lenge to faith nor that correct opinion or orthodox belief will 
bring a new reformation. Rather it is our conviction that 
we can only unite in loyalty to a common Lord and in 
service for a common cause. We believe that a man may be 
both fundamental and modern. But what do we mean by 
“fundamental”? If a thing is really fundamental, should it 
not fulfill three conditions? Must we not ask, Was this 
something that Jesus emphasized and counted fundamental? 
Is it central and vital to Christian experience today? Is it 
capable of repeated verification? If on the other hand, it is 
something which Jesus never mentioned, perhaps external, 
- material or mechanical; if it makes no real difference to our 
present experience and equally earnest Christians are found 
on opposite sides of the question; if it is something which 
in the nature of the case can never be proved or disproved, 
and about which equally earnest Christians have always 
differed, what then shall we do? Shall we hold to our own 
convictions, “in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in 
all things charity”? Or shall we enter the field of bitter sec- 
tarian controversy, to misjudge, to misrepresent, to hate and 
to forbid all who differ from us? 

Let us take a single example to show the impossibility of 
agreement on all matters of opinion and of doctrine. All 
evangelical Christians believe in God as the loving Father. 
They believe in his incarnation in the truly human life of 
Jesus. What, however, is the test of his divinity or of his 
moral and spiritual deity? Is it in what he was or in some 
external miracle as to the manner of his physical birth? 
Here earnest Christians, believing equally in his divinity and 
equally blessed of God in Christlike character and service, 
differ, as they have in the past and as they will continue to 

243 


244 APPENDIX 


do. To appreciate the difficulty of the situation and the fact 
that there are two sides to this question let us quote at length 
the words of Dr. William P. Merrill, pastor of the Brick 
Presbyterian Church of New York, one of the most earnest 
and spiritual ministers in America. Dr. Merrill writes, 
“The great desiderata are that each side shall understand the 
other, and that all shall know the facts. There is need for 
conference, frankness, considerateness, patience, prayer, 
courtesy. It is no time for one-sided dogmatic assertions. 
No man who has not fairly and sympathetically faced the 
facts as the man on the other side sees them, has any right 
to judge. What impresses one most is the extent of blind, 
unreasoning dogmatism on the one side and the other, and 
the lack of calm, open-minded consideration of all the facts, 
—particularly the facts which seem to the other man to 
uphold his view. 


Why Many Strongly Hold to the Virgin Birth 


1. Because it is directly and plainly stated as a fact in the 
Gospel narrative. Here is a weighty reason for all who take 
the Bible as their authority. You cannot make anything 
else out of what is said in Matthew and Luke but that Jesus 
was born of a virgin, and not of human fatherhood. 

2. The way the fact is stated is an additional argument. 
The fact is given so simply, so delicately, so reverently, so 
beautifully, with so light a touch. The very atmosphere of 
sincere narration of fact breathes in it. 

3. Impressive also is the acknowledged trustworthiness of 
one, at least, of the narrations. More and more sound his- 
torical criticism tends to support strongly the trustworthiness 


and carefulness of Luke as a historian. When such a writer — 


makes so unequivocal a statement as that regarding the © 
Virgin Birth, it is worthy of respect and careful attention. 
4. A fourth reason why many strongly hold this fact is — 
the unbroken testimony of the Church to it from the very — 
beginning. ; 
5. A fifth reason should be mentioned, sentiment. We — 


*“The Christian Work,’ Feb. 13, 1926. 


APPENDIX 245 


may discount sentiment, and call it irrational; but it is mighty 
and tenacious. Men and women do not want to give up this 
as fact. 


Why Some Feel Compelled to Doubt It 


It is a simple fact that some sincere, reverent, devout men 
and women, Christians by every rightful test, feel that they 
cannot affirm the Virgin Birth as a fact. 

They believe heartily in the absolute deity of Christ and 
hold strongly to the possibility of miracles and the actuality 
of many of them. They are supernaturalists. Yet they 
hesitate to affirm the Virgin Birth as a fact of history; some 
of them positively disbelieve it. 

Why is this? Here are some of the reasons. Every 
champion of the Virgin Birth should consider these reasons 
seriously, patiently, generously, lest he misjudge his brethren. 

1. The lack of absolute clearness in the Scriptural testi- 
mony. 

(a) Everywhere, save in these opening passages, Jesus is 
referred to as the ‘son of Joseph.’ There is not a hint of 
anything unusual in His birth. Mary herself speaks to Jesus 
of Joseph as ‘thy father.’ 

(b) Jesus’ brethren did not believe in Him, and they and 
His mother thought Him mad because of His high claims 
and public actions. Is such an attitude conceivable if they 
knew of His unique nature by birth? 

(c) The very Gospels which state the Virgin Birth give 
genealogies of our Lord which trace His descent through 
Joseph, not through Mary. Why should they do this, if the 
Virgin Birth were the accepted fact? 

It is a sobering, arresting fact, that if one leaves out three 
verses in Matthew and two verses in Luke, the consistent, 
unvarying impression from those Gospels, as from the other 
two, is that Jesus was born as other men are, of a human 
father and mother. 

2. The silence of the rest of the New Testament. 

The argument from silence is, of course, a precarious one. 
Because a writer does not mention something, it does not 


246 APPENDIX. 


prove that he did not know of it. But when we find, as we 
do, that the Virgin Birth is absolutely ignored by Mark, 
John, Paul, and all the rest of the New Testament, it raises 
serious questions. Either they did not know of this doctrine, 
or they ignored it. If they did not know of it, where was it? 
If they ignored it, how can it be considered an essential of 
Christianity? Here is Paul, giving his soul and his life to 
convincing the world of the deity of Christ. Yet not a word 
about the Virgin Birth. Here is John, definitely stating that 
he wrote his Gospel in order that men might believe ‘that 
Jesus is the Son of God’; yet he ignores a fact or doctrine 
which a recent writer declares so essential to faith in our 
Lord’s divinity that one cannot have a divine Lord unless He 
was born of the Holy Spirit and a virgin. The silence of 
John and Paul does not disprove the fact of the Virgin Birth. 
Of course not. But does it not decisively stamp it as unes- 
sential? What other conclusion is possible? Can we blame 
men for hesitating to accept as an essential and integral part 
of their faith something not mentioned by John, Paul, the 
author of Hebrews, and our Lord Himself ? 

3. The lack of practical and theological value. 

The atonement, the resurrection, the deity of our Lord— 
these make a difference. What practical value has the fact 
of the Virgin Birth? Were souls ever saved by it? What 
theological value has it? 

(a) It has been said that our Lord could not really be Son 
of God except through the Virgin Birth. But the true and 
accepted doctrine is not that Jesus became Son of God 
through His birth; but, as the Westminster Catechism finely 
puts it, that ‘the Son of God became man’ by the process of 
birth. Is there any philosophical reason why that could be 
accomplished through the use of one human parent, and not 
through the use of two? The birth from a virgin seems to 
have no necessary connection with the doctrine of our Lord’s 
divinity. 

(b) It has been urged that the Virgin Birth was necessary 
in order to save our Lord from the taint of original sin 
which rests on all who proceed from Adam ‘by ordinary 


ia * 


APPENDIX. 247 


generation.’ But this seems to involve the monstrous notion 
that original sin comes wholly from the father ; or the equally 
abhorrent idea that there is something inherently sinful in 
wedded love. In Jewish law it was the mother who was 
purified after childbirth. Roman Catholics try to escape this 
dilemma by declaring that Mary also was conceived of the 
Holy Spirit. But this only pushes the difficulty a step back. 
Given any human parentage at all, the human inheritance is 
there. 

4. Perhaps the strongest reason why some reject or doubt 
the fact of the Virgin Birth is that it seems to involve certain 
unfortunate implications, or to lie open to unfortunate mis- 
constructions, to which the mind of our day is particularly 
sensitive. 

(a) It seems to militate against the real comradeship of 
Christ, and to weaken the pull and power of His example 
as a challenge to our living. Now, to put it bluntly, it seems 
to many as if the Virgin Birth gave our Lord a handicap, an 
unnatural advantage, which weakens greatly the force and 
reality of His example. If He started thus differently from 
us, then it is hard to see how He was ‘tempted in all points 
like as we are.’ His example becomes unreal. 

(b) The Virgin Birth seems also to be somewhat closely 
entangled with one of the most false and harmful ideas 
which have persistently haunted the mind of man—the notion 
that the sex life is naturally unclean or sinful, and that 
virginity is higher, purer, more acceptable to God, than is 
married life. 

In view of these facts, no one should say that the stories 
about the birth of Jesus are one in kind with the stories of 
the intercourse of Greek gods with women, or other stories 
of miraculous birth. No one should say, or imply, that those 
who hold to the Virgin Birth are blindly clinging to an 
irrational tradition. Strong reasons support their position, 
as we have seen. 

No one should say that those who reject or are unable to 
affirm the Virgin Birth are unbelievers, or hold a low view of 
the deity of our Lord. They have their strong reasons, as 


248 APPENDIX 


we have seen, reasons which do not involve any lack of 
sound faith in our Lord’s perfect deity. 

No one should say that the alternative to acceptance of the 
Virgin Birth is the belief that our Lord was an illegitimate 
child. Those who are constrained to doubt the fact of the 
Virgin Birth believe that our Lord was born of the pure and 
loving wedlock of two pure and loving parents, chosen of 
the Lord for their high privilege. They are as ready to affirm 
faith in His sinless conception and holy birth as are those 
who hold the accepted position. 

One cannot say what another should decide on the basis 
of these facts. ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his 
own mind.’ But there is a simple conclusion to which we 
are all irresistibly drawn by these facts, taken together. It 
is that all of us should be extremely patient, considerate, 
open-minded, fair; slow to pass judgment, generous each to 
the other’s position. The Church should be careful about 
declaring essential a fact with regard to which so many 
devout souls have serious and strong objections. Still more 
should all be careful not to treat lightly a fact so closely inter- 
woven with the life and faith of the Church through all the 
ages. 

It is a time for considerateness, tolerance, fair-mindedness, 
readiness to wait and confer and study and think. Above 
all, it is a time for exercising the Golden Rule, and keeping 
the one great commandment, that we love one another.” 


APPENDIX II 
‘A New Social Creed 


The Social Creed of the Churches is an attempt to point 
out certain consequences which would follow for our social 
life if we were to take Jesus in earnest and make His social 
and spiritual ideals our test for community as well as for 
individual life. It insists on a strengthening and deepening 
of the inner personal relationship of the individual with God, 
and a recognition of his obligation and duty to society. This 
is crystallized in the two commandments of Jesus: “Love 
thy God and love thy neighbor.” It involves the recognition 
of the sacredness of life, the supreme worth of each single 
personality, and our common membership in one another— 
the brotherhood of all. In short, it means creative activity 
in cooperation with our fellow human beings, and with God, 
in the everyday life of society and in the development of a 
new and better world social order. Translating this ideal: 


1. Into education means: 


(a) The building of a social order in which every child 
has the best opportunity for development. 

(b) Adequate and equal education for all, with the possi- 
bility of extended training for those competent. 

(c) A thorough and scientific program of religious edu- 
cation designed to help Christianize every-day life and 
conduct. 

(d) Conservation of health, including careful instruction 
in sex hygiene, abundant and wholesome recreation facilities, 
and education for leisure, including a nation-wide system of 
adult education. 

(e) Enforcement of constitutional rights and duties, in- 
cluding freedom of speech, of the press, and of peaceable 
assemblage. | 

(f£) Constructive education and Christian care of depend- 

249 


250 APPENDIX 


ents, defectives and delinquents, in order to restore them to 
normal life whenever possible, but with kindly segregation 
for those who are hopelessly feeble-minded. 


2. Into sndustry and economic relationships means: 


(a) That group interests whether of labor or capital must 
always be subordinated to the welfare of the nation as a 
whole. 

(b) A frank abandonment of all efforts to secure un- 
earned income, that is, reward which does not come from a 
real service. 

(c) Recognition that the unlimited right of private owner- 
ship is un-Christian. 

(d) Abolishing child labor and raising the legal age limits 
to insure maximum physical, educational, and moral develop- 
ment. 

(e) Freedom from employment one day in seven. 

(f) The eight-hour day as the present maximum for all 
industrial workers, and a reduction to the lowest point that 
is scientifically necessary to produce all the goods we need. 

(g) Providing safe and sanitary industrial conditions, 
especially protecting women. 

(h) Adequate accident, sickness, and unemployment in- 
surance, together with suitable provision for old age. 

(i) That the first charge upon industry should be a mini- 
mum comfort wage, which will enable all the children of the 
workers to become the most effective Christian citizens. 

(j) Adequate means of impartial investigation and pub- 
licity, conciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes. 

(k) The right of labor to organize with representatives of 
their own choosing, and to a fair share in the management. 

(1) Encouragement of the organization of consumers’ 
cooperatives for the more equitable distribution of the essen- 
tials of life. 7 

(m) The supremacy of the service, rather than the profit 
motive in the acquisition and use of property, on the part of 
both labor and capital, and the most equitable division of the 
product of industry that can ultimately be devised. 


APPENDIX 251. 
3. Into agriculture means: 


(a) That the farmer shall have access to the land he works 
on such terms as will ensure him personal freedom and 
economic encouragement, while society is amply protected 
by efficient production and conservation of fertility. 

(b) That the cost of market distribution from farmer to 
consumer shall be cut to the lowest possible terms, both 
farmers and consumers sharing in these economies. 

(c) That there shall be every encouragement to the organ- 
ization of farmers for economic ends, particularly for 
cooperative sales and purchases. 

(d) That an efficient system of both vocational and gen- 
eral education of youths and adults living on farms shall 
be available. 

(e) That special efforts shall be made to ensure the farmer 
adequate: social institutions, including the church, the school, 
the library, means of recreation, good local government, and 
particularly the best possible farm home. 

(f) That there shall be a widespread development of 
organized rural communities, thoroughly democratic, com- 
pletely codperative, and possessed with the spirit of the 
common welfare. 


4. Into racial relations means: 


~ (a) The same protection and rights for other races in 
America that we ourselves enjoy, especially legislation against 
lynching. 

(b) Eliminating racial discrimination, and substituting full 
brotherly treatment for all races in America. 

(c) The fullest codperation between the churches of 
various races, even though of different denominations. 

(d) Special educational and social equipment for immi- 
grants, with government information bureaus. 


5. Into international relations means: 


(a) The removal of every unjust barrier of trade, color, 
creed, and race, and the practice of equal justice for all 
nations. 


252 APPENDIX 


(b) That the old methods of secret diplomacy and secret 
treaties are today unnecessary and un-Christian. 

(c) That all nations should associate themselves perma- 
nently for world peace and good will, that war should be 
legally outlawed, and that differences between nations should 
be settled in an international court. 

(d) That any dishonest imperialism of selfishness must 
be replaced by such genuine disinterested treatment of back- 
ward nations as to contribute the maximum to the welfare 
of each, and of all the world. 

(e) That military armaments should be abolished by all 
nations except for a small police force. 

(f) That the church as an institution should no longer 
support war in any form. (This would still leave the indi- 
vidual free to do as his conscience dictates. ) 


CoMMISSION ON SOCIAL SERVICE 


14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. 


A Student's Purpose 


1. To follow Jesus Christ as Savior, and as the Master 
of my life. To seek to find and to follow Jesus’ way, all 
the way, in all of life. 

2. To live the simple life of self-sacrifice. To make the 
purpose of my life the building of personality, not the 
accumulation of property; the making of men rather than 
the making of money. Not to grow rich in a poor world 
by laying up treasure for myself, but to share all that I have 
or receive for the enrichment of my fellow men. To do to 
others, especially to those who toil and to all who suffer from 
injustice, all things whatsoever I would that men should 
do to me. 

3. To make the spirit of my life that of codperation and 
brotherhood. To accept as my brother whosoever will do 


APPENDIX 253 


the will of God. To participate in no secret order or fra- 
ternity, if it tends to exclusiveness, prejudice or strife. So 
far as in me lies, to observe equality of race treatment, 
without distinction of caste or color in the practice of 
brotherhood. 

4. To outlaw war, “the world’s chief collective sin,” even 
as piracy and slavery have already been outlawed, substi- 
tuting a positive program of international justice and good- 
will. I will follow what I understand to be Jesus’ way of 
life in the overcoming of evil with good, and of hatred by 
love, whether in time of peace or war. 

5. To apply this purpose immediately to the problems of 
our campus. To seek education which will prepare for 
service, rather than the attainment of grades. To tolerate 
no dishonest practices in class-room, athletics or college 
elections; to participate in no exclusive or divisive social 
grouping; to maintain no relationships with my fellows, men 
or women, which violate absolute purity or debase the divine 
value of personality. 

In order to carry out this five-fold purpose, I will imme- 
diately associate my efforts with all others who will seek the 
realization of Jesus’ way of life. 


The Hammonds thus conclude their biography of Lord 
Shaftesbury, “The devil with sad and sober sense on his 
grey face, tells the rulers of the world that the misery which 
disfigures the life of great societies is beyond the reach of 
human remedy. A voice is raised from time to time in 
answer; a challenge in the name of the mercy of God, or 
the justice of nature, or the dignity of man. Shaftesbury 
was such a voice. To the law of indifference and drift, 
taught by philosophers and accepted by politicians, he 
opposed the simple revelation of his Christian conscience. 
This was his service to England; not the service of a states- 
man with wide plan and commanding will, but the service of 
a prophet speaking truth to power in its selfishness and 


254 APPENDIX 


sloth. When silence falls on such a voice, some everlasting 
echo still haunts the world, to break its sleep of habit or 
despair.””+ 

Studdert-Kennedy says, “Shaftesbury’s voice was but the 
echo of a voice that first spoke on the shores of the Sea of 
Galilee, and that voice must become not an echo but a 
trumpet call which can be heard in every human heart. Then 
only can we attain that for which our souls long—peace.” 


*“Life of Lord Shaftesbury,” by J. L. and Barbara Hammond, 


- cloth-lined paper, 50 cents. 


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FACING THE Crisis, by Sherwood Eddy. A study of present day 
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CHRISTIANITY AND EcoNoMIc ProBLeMs, Kirby Page, Editor. A 
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Over 700,000 Copies Have Been Sold 


George H. Doran Company, Publishers, 
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255 


256 IMPORTANT BOOKS 


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No. 10. WHY NOT TRY CHRISTIANITY, by S. Z. Batten, 32 pages, 
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Christianity and Personal Problems Series 


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Any of these publications may be secured from 


SHERWOOD EDDY 
347 Madison Avenue New York City 


Reduced Rates for Quantities 


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privilege of returning unsold copies. 


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